In precompiled binary MySQL distributions that include libmysqld, the embedded server library, MySQL builds the library using the appropriate vendor compiler if there is one.

To get a libmysqld library if you build MySQL from source yourself, you should configure MySQL with the --with-embedded-server option. See Section 2.9.2, “Typical configure Options”.

When you link your program with libmysqld, you must also include the system-specific pthread libraries and some libraries that the MySQL server uses. You can get the full list of libraries by executing mysql_config --libmysqld-libs.

The correct flags for compiling and linking a threaded program must be used, even if you do not directly call any thread functions in your code.

To compile a C program to include the necessary files to embed the MySQL server library into an executable version of a program, the compiler will need to know where to find various files and need instructions on how to compile the program. The following example shows how a program could be compiled from the command line, assuming that you are using gcc, use the GNU C compiler:

gcc mysql_test.c -o mysql_test -lz \
`/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config --include --libmysqld-libs`

Immediately following the gcc command is the name of the C program source file. After it, the -o option is given to indicate that the file name that follows is the name that the compiler is to give to the output file, the compiled program. The next line of code tells the compiler to obtain the location of the include files and libraries and other settings for the system on which it's compiled. Because of a problem with mysql_config, the option -lz (for compression) is added here. The mysql_config command is contained in backticks, not single quotes.

On some non-gcc platforms, the embedded library depends on C++ runtime libraries and linking against the embedded library might result in missing-symbol errors. To solve this, link using a C++ compiler or explicitly list the required libraries on the link command line.