4.2 Source Installation Prerequisites

Installation of MySQL from source requires several development tools. Some of these tools are needed no matter whether you use a standard source distribution or a development source tree. Other tool requirements depend on which installation method you use.

To install MySQL from source, the following system requirements must be satisfied, regardless of installation method:

• CMake, which is used as the build framework on all platforms. CMake can be downloaded from http://www.cmake.org.

• A good make program. Although some platforms come with their own make implementations, it is highly recommended that you use GNU make 3.75 or later. It may already be available on your system as gmake. GNU make is available from http://www.gnu.org/software/make/.

  On Unix-like systems, including Linux, you can check your system's version of make like this:

  $> make --version
  GNU Make 4.2.1

• A working ANSI C++ compiler. See the description of the FORCE_UNSUPPORTED_COMPILER option for some guidelines.

• An SSL library is required for support of encrypted connections, entropy for random number generation, and other encryption-related operations. By default, the build uses the OpenSSL library installed on the host system. To specify the library explicitly, use the WITH_SSL option when you invoke CMake. For additional information, see Section 4.6, “Configuring SSL Library Support”.

• The Boost C++ libraries are required to build MySQL (but not to use it). Boost 1.59.0 must be installed. To obtain Boost and its installation instructions, visit the official Boost web site. After Boost is installed, tell the build system where the Boost files are placed according to the value set for the WITH_BOOST option when you invoke CMake. For example:

  cmake . -DWITH_BOOST=/usr/local/boost_version_number

  Adjust the path as necessary to match your installation.

• The ncurses library.

• Sufficient free memory. If you encounter build errors such as internal compiler error when compiling large source files, it may be that you have too little memory. If compiling on a virtual machine, try increasing the memory allocation.

• Perl is needed if you intend to run test scripts. Most Unix-like systems include Perl. For Windows, you can use ActiveState Perl. or Strawberry Perl.

To install MySQL from a standard source distribution, one of the following tools is required to unpack the distribution file:

• For a .tar.gz compressed tar file: GNU gunzip to uncompress the distribution and a reasonable tar to unpack it. If your tar program supports the z option, it can both uncompress and unpack the file.

  GNU tar is known to work. The standard tar provided with some operating systems is not able to unpack the long file names in the MySQL distribution. You should download and install GNU tar, or if available, use a preinstalled version of GNU tar. Usually this is available as gnutar, gtar, or as tar within a GNU or Free Software directory, such as /usr/sfw/bin or /usr/local/bin. GNU tar is available from https://www.gnu.org/software/tar/.

• For a .zip Zip archive: WinZip or another tool that can read .zip files.

• For an .rpm RPM package: The rpmbuild program used to build the distribution unpacks it.

To install MySQL from a development source tree, the following additional tools are required:

• The Git revision control system is required to obtain the development source code. GitHub Help provides instructions for downloading and installing Git on different platforms.

• bison 2.1 or later, available from http://www.gnu.org/software/bison/. (Version 1 is no longer supported.) Use the latest version of bison where possible; if you experience problems, upgrade to a later version, rather than revert to an earlier one.

  bison is available from http://www.gnu.org/software/bison/. bison for Windows can be downloaded from http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/bison.htm. Download the package labeled “Complete package, excluding sources”. On Windows, the default location for bison is the C:\Program Files\GnuWin32 directory. Some utilities may fail to find bison because of the space in the directory name. Also, Visual Studio may simply hang if there are spaces in the path. You can resolve these problems by installing into a directory that does not contain a space (for example C:\GnuWin32).

• On Solaris Express, m4 must be installed in addition to bison. m4 is available from http://www.gnu.org/software/m4/.

Note

If you have to install any programs, modify your PATH environment variable to include any directories in which the programs are located. See Setting Environment Variables.

If you run into problems and need to file a bug report, please use the instructions in How to Report Bugs or Problems.