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3.3.3 Installing from Source

Caution

You need to install Connector/J from source only if you want to build a customized version of Connector/J or if you are interested in helping us test our new code. To just get MySQL Connector/J up and running on your system, install Connector/J using a standard binary release distribution; see Section 3.3.1, “Installing Connector/J from a Binary Distribution” for instructions.

To install MySQL Connector/J from source, make sure that you have the following software on your system:

Tip

It is suggested that the latest versions available for the following software be used for compiling Connector/J; otherwise, some features might not be available.

To build MySQL Connector/J from source, follow these steps:

  1. Make sure that you have JDK 1.8.x installed.

  2. Obtain the sources for Connector/J by one of the following means:

    • Download the platform independent distribution archive (in .tar.gz or .zip format) for Connector/J, which contains the sources, from the Connector/J Download page. Extract contents of the archive into a folder named, for example, mysql-connector-j.

    • Download a source RPM package for Connector/J from Connector/J Download page and install it.

    • Check out the code from the source code repository for MySQL Connector/J located on GitHub at https://github.com/mysql/mysql-connector-j. The latest release of the Connector/J 8.0 series is on the release/8.0 branch; use the following command to check it out:

      $> git clone --branch release/8.0 https://github.com/mysql/mysql-connector-j.git

      Under the current directory, the command creates a mysql-connector-j subdirectory , which contains the code you want.

  3. Place all the required third-party libraries in a the directory called lib at the root of the source tree (that is, in mysql-connector-j/lib, if you have followed the steps above), or put them elsewhere and supply the location to Ant later (see Step 5 below).

  4. Change your current working directory to the mysql-connector-j directory created in step 2 above.

  5. In the directory, create a file named build.properties to indicate to Ant the location of the root directory for your JDK 1.8.x installation with the property com.mysql.cj.build.jdk, as well as the location for the extra libraries, if they are not in mysql-connector-j/lib, with the property com.mysql.cj.extra.libs. Here is a sample file with those properties set (replace the path_to_* parts with the appropriate file paths):

    com.mysql.cj.build.jdk=path_to_jdk_1.8
    com.mysql.cj.extra.libs=path_to_folder_for_extra_libraries

    Alternatively, you can set the values of those properties through the Ant -D options.

    Note

    Going from Connector/J 5.1 to 8.0 and beyond, a number of Ant properties for building Connector/J have been renamed or removed; see Section 3.3.4.1.4, “Changes for Build Properties” for details.

  6. Issue the following command to compile the driver and create a .jar file for Connector/J:

    $> ant build

    This creates a build directory in the current directory, where all the build output goes. A directory is created under the build directory, whose name includes the version number of the release you are building. That directory contains the sources, the compiled .class files, and a .jar file for deployment.

    For information on all the build targets, including those that create a fully packaged distribution, issue the following command:

    $> ant -projecthelp
  7. Install the newly created .jar file for the JDBC driver as you would install a binary .jar file you download from MySQL by following the instructions given in Configuring the CLASSPATH or Configuring Connector/J for Application Servers.