2.3.3 Typical configure Options

The configure script gives you a great deal of control over how you configure your MySQL distribution. Typically you do this using options on the configure command-line. You can also affect configure using certain environment variables. See section F Environment Variables. For a list of options supported by configure, run this command:

shell> ./configure --help

Some of the more commonly-used configure options are described here:

• To compile just the MySQL client libraries and client programs and not the server, use the --without-server option:

  shell> ./configure --without-server
  

  If you don't have a C++ compiler, mysql will not compile (it is the one client program that requires C++). In this case, you can remove the code in configure that tests for the C++ compiler and then run ./configure with the --without-server option. The compile step will still try to build mysql, but you can ignore any warnings about `mysql.cc'. (If make stops, try make -k to tell it to continue with the rest of the build even if errors occur.)
• If you want to get an embedded MySQL library (libmysqld.a) you should use the --with-embedded-server option.
• If you don't want your log files and database directories located under `/usr/local/var', use a configure command, something like one of these:

  shell> ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql
  shell> ./configure --prefix=/usr/local \
             --localstatedir=/usr/local/mysql/data
  

  The first command changes the installation prefix so that everything is installed under `/usr/local/mysql' rather than the default of `/usr/local'. The second command preserves the default installation prefix, but overrides the default location for database directories (normally `/usr/local/var') and changes it to /usr/local/mysql/data. After you have compiled MySQL, you can change these options with option files. See section 4.1.2 `my.cnf' Option Files.
• If you are using Unix and you want the MySQL socket located somewhere other than the default location (normally in the directory `/tmp' or `/var/run') use a configure command like this:

  shell> ./configure --with-unix-socket-path=/usr/local/mysql/tmp/mysql.sock
  

  Note that the given file must be an absolute pathname. You can also later change the location `mysql.sock' by using the MySQL option files. See section A.4.5 How to Protect or Change the MySQL Socket File `/tmp/mysql.sock'.
• If you want to compile statically linked programs (for example, to make a binary distribution, to get more speed, or to work around problems with some Red Hat Linux distributions), run configure like this:

  shell> ./configure --with-client-ldflags=-all-static \
             --with-mysqld-ldflags=-all-static
  

• If you are using gcc and don't have libg++ or libstdc++ installed, you can tell configure to use gcc as your C++ compiler:

  shell> CC=gcc CXX=gcc ./configure
  

  When you use gcc as your C++ compiler, it will not attempt to link in libg++ or libstdc++. This may be a good idea to do even if you have the above libraries installed, as some versions of these libraries have caused strange problems for MySQL users in the past. Here are some common environment variables to set depending on the compiler you are using:

  Compiler	Recommended options
  gcc 2.7.2.1	CC=gcc CXX=gcc CXXFLAGS="-O3 -felide-constructors"
  egcs 1.0.3a	CC=gcc CXX=gcc CXXFLAGS="-O3 -felide-constructors -fno-exceptions -fno-rtti"
  gcc 2.95.2	CFLAGS="-O3 -mpentiumpro" CXX=gcc CXXFLAGS="-O3 -mpentiumpro \ -felide-constructors -fno-exceptions -fno-rtti"
  pgcc 2.90.29 or newer	CFLAGS="-O3 -mpentiumpro -mstack-align-double" CXX=gcc \ CXXFLAGS="-O3 -mpentiumpro -mstack-align-double -felide-constructors \ -fno-exceptions -fno-rtti"

  In most cases you can get a reasonably optimal MySQL binary by using the options from the preceding table and adding the following options to the configure line:

  --prefix=/usr/local/mysql --enable-assembler \
  --with-mysqld-ldflags=-all-static
  

  The full configure line would, in other words, be something like the following for all recent gcc versions:

  CFLAGS="-O3 -mpentiumpro" CXX=gcc CXXFLAGS="-O3 -mpentiumpro \
  -felide-constructors -fno-exceptions -fno-rtti" ./configure \
  --prefix=/usr/local/mysql --enable-assembler \
  --with-mysqld-ldflags=-all-static
  

  The binaries we provide on the MySQL web site at http://www.mysql.com/ are all compiled with full optimisation and should be perfect for most users. See section 2.2.10 MySQL Binaries Compiled by MySQL AB. There are some things you can tweak to make an even faster binary, but this is only for advanced users. See section 5.5.3 How Compiling and Linking Affects the Speed of MySQL. If the build fails and produces errors about your compiler or linker not being able to create the shared library `libmysqlclient.so.#' (`#' is a version number), you can work around this problem by giving the --disable-shared option to configure. In this case, configure will not build a shared `libmysqlclient.so.#' library.
• You can configure MySQL not to use DEFAULT column values for non-NULL columns (that is, columns that are not allowed to be NULL). See section 1.8.5.2 Constraint NOT NULL and DEFAULT values.

  shell> CXXFLAGS=-DDONT_USE_DEFAULT_FIELDS ./configure
  

• By default, MySQL uses the ISO-8859-1 (Latin1) character set. To change the default set, use the --with-charset option:

  shell> ./configure --with-charset=CHARSET
  

  CHARSET may be one of big5, cp1251, cp1257, czech, danish, dec8, dos, euc_kr, gb2312, gbk, german1, hebrew, hp8, hungarian, koi8_ru, koi8_ukr, latin1, latin2, sjis, swe7, tis620, ujis, usa7, or win1251ukr. See section 4.6.1 The Character Set Used for Data and Sorting. If you want to convert characters between the server and the client, you should take a look at the SET CHARACTER SET command. See section 5.5.6 SET Syntax. Warning: If you change character sets after having created any tables, you will have to run myisamchk -r -q --set-character-set=charset on every table. Your indexes may be sorted incorrectly otherwise. (This can happen if you install MySQL, create some tables, then reconfigure MySQL to use a different character set and reinstall it.) With the option --with-extra-charsets=LIST you can define which additional character sets should be compiled into the server. Here LIST is either a list of character sets separated with spaces, complex to include all characters that can't be dynamically loaded, or all to include all character sets into the binaries.
• To configure MySQL with debugging code, use the --with-debug option:

  shell> ./configure --with-debug
  

  This causes a safe memory allocator to be included that can find some errors and that provides output about what is happening. See section E.1 Debugging a MySQL server.
• If your client programs are using threads, you need to also compile a thread-safe version of the MySQL client library with the --enable-thread-safe-client configure options. This will create a libmysqlclient_r library with which you should link your threaded applications. See section 9.1.14 How to Make a Threaded Client.
• Options that pertain to particular systems can be found in the system-specific section of this manual. See section 2.6 Operating System Specific Notes.

User Comments

Thanks a lot for that last tip, DaPhreak. You saved
my mysql install. :)

For all who had the same Prolem like me :

If you get some error like this :
No curses/termcap library found

configure you're Source Distribution with the
option --with-named-curses-
libs=/your/path/to/lib/libncurses.so.5.0


Best Regards DaPhreak

One thing puzzles me. How do you get the compile to put the libraries in /usr/local/mysql/lib? When I use --libdir=/usr/local/mysql/lib, I get the libraries in /usr/local/mysql/lib/mysql

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