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MySQL 5.1 Reference Manual :: 21 Connectors and APIs :: 21.3 MySQL Connector/J :: 21.3.2 Connector/J Installation :: 21.3.2.4 Installing from the Development Source Tree
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21.3.2.4. Installing from the Development Source Tree

Caution

You should read this section only if you are interested in helping us test our new code. If you just want to get MySQL Connector/J up and running on your system, you should use a standard binary release distribution.

To install MySQL Connector/J from the development source tree, make sure that you have the following prerequisites:

  • A Bazaar client, to check out the sources from our Launchpad repository (available from http://bazaar-vcs.org/).

  • Apache Ant version 1.7 or newer (available from http://ant.apache.org/).

  • JDK 1.4.2 or later. Although MySQL Connector/J can be be used with older JDKs, to compile it from source you must have at least JDK 1.4.2. If you are building Connector/J 5.1 you will need JDK 1.6.x and an older JDK such as JDK 1.5.x. You will then need to point your JAVA_HOME environment variable at the older installation.

The source code repository for MySQL Connector/J is located on Launchpad at https://code.launchpad.net/connectorj.

To check out and compile a specific branch of MySQL Connector/J, follow these steps:

  1. Check out the latest code from the branch that you want with one of the following commands.

    To check out the latest development branch use: 

    shell> bzr branch lp:connectorj

    This creates a connectorj subdirectory in the current directory that contains the latest sources for the requested branch.

    To check out the latest 5.1 code use: 

    shell> bzr branch lp:connectorj/5.1

    This will create a 5.1 subdirectory in the current directory containing the latest 5.1 code.

  2. If you are building Connector/J 5.1 make sure that you have both JDK 1.6.x installed and an older JDK such as JDK 1.5.x. This is because Connector/J supports both JDBC 3.0 (which was prior to JDK 1.6.x) and JDBC 4.0. Set your JAVA_HOME environment variable to the path of the older JDK installation.

  3. Change location to either the connectorj or 5.1 directory, depending on which branch you want to build, to make it your current working directory. For example: 

    shell> cd connectorj

  4. If you are building Connector/J 5.1 you need to edit the build.xml to reflect the location of your JDK 1.6.x installation. The lines that you need to change are: 

                <property name="com.mysql.jdbc.java6.javac" value="C:\jvms\jdk1.6.0\bin\javac.exe" />
            <property name="com.mysql.jdbc.java6.rtjar" value="C:\jvms\jdk1.6.0\jre\lib\rt.jar" />

    Alternatively, you can set the value of these property names through the Ant -D option.

  5. Issue the following command to compile the driver and create a .jar file suitable for installation: 

    shell> ant dist

    This creates a build directory in the current directory, where all build output will go. A directory is created in the build directory that includes the version number of the sources you are building from. This directory contains the sources, compiled .class files, and a .jar file suitable for deployment. For other possible targets, including ones that will create a fully packaged distribution, issue the following command: 

    shell> ant -projecthelp

  6. A newly created .jar file containing the JDBC driver will be placed in the directory build/mysql-connector-java-[version].

    Install the newly created JDBC driver as you would a binary .jar file that you download from MySQL by following the instructions in Section 21.3.2.2, “Installing the Driver and Configuring the CLASSPATH”.

A package containing both the binary and source code for Connector/J 5.1 can also be found at the following location: Connector/J 5.1 Download