After your plugin is written, you must compile it and install it. The procedure for compiling shared objects varies from system to system. If you build your library using the GNU autotools, libtool should be able to generate the correct compilation commands for your system. If the library is named somepluglib, you should end up with a shared object file that has a name something like somepluglib.so. (The file name might have a different suffix on your system.)

To use the autotools, you'll need to make a few changes to the configuration files at this point to enable the plugin to be compiled and installed. Assume that your MySQL distribution is installed at a base directory of /usr/local/mysql and that its header files are located in the include directory under the base directory.

Edit Makefile.am, which should look something like this:

#Makefile.am example for a plugin

pkgplugindir=$(libdir)/mysql/plugin
INCLUDES= -I$(top_builddir)/include -I$(top_srcdir)/include
#noinst_LTLIBRARIES= somepluglib.la
pkgplugin_LTLIBRARIES= somepluglib.la
somepluglib_la_SOURCES= plugin_example.c
somepluglib_la_LDFLAGS= -module -rpath $(pkgplugindir)
somepluglib_la_CFLAGS= -DMYSQL_DYNAMIC_PLUGIN

Adjust the INCLUDES line to specify the path name to the installed MySQL header files. Edit it to look like this:

INCLUDES= -I/usr/local/mysql/include

Make sure that the noinst_LTLIBRARIES line is commented out or remove it. Make sure that the pkglib_LTLIBRARIES line is not commented out; it enables the make install command.

Set up the files needed for the configure command, invoke it, and run make:

shell> autoreconf --force --install --symlink
shell> ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql
shell> make

The --prefix option to configure indicates the MySQL base directory under which the plugin should be installed. You can see what value to use for this option with SHOW VARIABLES:

mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'basedir';
+---------------+------------------+
| Variable_name | Value            |
+---------------+------------------+
| base          | /usr/local/mysql |
+---------------+------------------+

The location of the plugin directory where you should install the library is given by the plugin_dir system variable. For example:

mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'plugin_dir';
+---------------+-----------------------------------+
| Variable_name | Value                             |
+---------------+-----------------------------------+
| plugin_dir    | /usr/local/mysql/lib/mysql/plugin |
+---------------+-----------------------------------+

To install the plugin library, use make:

shell> make install

Verify that make install installed the plugin library in the proper directory. After installing it, make sure that the library permissions permit it to be executed by the server.