MySQL Installation Guide  /  Installing MySQL from Source  /  Dealing with Problems Compiling MySQL

4.8 Dealing with Problems Compiling MySQL

The solution to many problems involves reconfiguring. If you do reconfigure, take note of the following:

  • If CMake is run after it has previously been run, it may use information that was gathered during its previous invocation. This information is stored in CMakeCache.txt. When CMake starts, it looks for that file and reads its contents if it exists, on the assumption that the information is still correct. That assumption is invalid when you reconfigure.

  • Each time you run CMake, you must run make again to recompile. However, you may want to remove old object files from previous builds first because they were compiled using different configuration options.

To prevent old object files or configuration information from being used, run the following commands before re-running CMake:

On Unix:

$> make clean
$> rm CMakeCache.txt

On Windows:

$> devenv MySQL.sln /clean
$> del CMakeCache.txt

If you build outside of the source tree, remove and recreate your build directory before re-running CMake. For instructions on building outside of the source tree, see How to Build MySQL Server with CMake.

On some systems, warnings may occur due to differences in system include files. The following list describes other problems that have been found to occur most often when compiling MySQL:

  • To define which C and C++ compilers to use, you can define the CC and CXX environment variables. For example:

    $> CC=gcc
    $> CXX=g++
    $> export CC CXX

    While this can be done on the command line, as just shown, you may prefer to define these values in a build script, in which case the export command is not needed.

    To specify your own C and C++ compiler flags, use the CMAKE_C_FLAGS and CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS CMake options. See Compiler Flags.

    To see what flags you might need to specify, invoke mysql_config with the --cflags and --cxxflags options.

  • To see what commands are executed during the compile stage, after using CMake to configure MySQL, run make VERBOSE=1 rather than just make.

  • If compilation fails, check whether the MYSQL_MAINTAINER_MODE option is enabled. This mode causes compiler warnings to become errors, so disabling it may enable compilation to proceed.

  • If your compile fails with errors such as any of the following, you must upgrade your version of make to GNU make:

    make: Fatal error in reader: Makefile, line 18:
    Badly formed macro assignment

    Or:

    make: file `Makefile' line 18: Must be a separator (:

    Or:

    pthread.h: No such file or directory

    Solaris and FreeBSD are known to have troublesome make programs.

    GNU make 3.75 is known to work.

  • The sql_yacc.cc file is generated from sql_yacc.yy. Normally, the build process does not need to create sql_yacc.cc because MySQL comes with a pregenerated copy. However, if you do need to re-create it, you might encounter this error:

    "sql_yacc.yy", line xxx fatal: default action causes potential...

    This is a sign that your version of yacc is deficient. You probably need to install a recent version of bison (the GNU version of yacc) and use that instead.

    Versions of bison older than 1.75 may report this error:

    sql_yacc.yy:#####: fatal error: maximum table size (32767) exceeded

    The maximum table size is not actually exceeded; the error is caused by bugs in older versions of bison.

For information about acquiring or updating tools, see the system requirements in Chapter 4, Installing MySQL from Source.