4.8 Problems compiling?

All MySQL programs compile cleanly for us with no warnings on Solaris using gcc. On other systems, warnings may occur due to differences in system include files. See 4.9 MIT-pthreads notes, for warnings that may occur when using MIT-pthreads. For other problems, check the list below.

The solution to many problems involves reconfiguring. If you do need to reconfigure, take note of the following:

  • If configure is run after it already has been run, it may use information that was gathered during its previous invocation. This information is stored in `config.cache'. When configure starts up, it looks for that file and reads its contents if it exists, on the assumption that the information is still correct. That assumption is invalid when you reconfigure.
  • Each time you run configure, you must run make again to recompile. However, you may want to remove old object files from previous builds first, since they were compiled using different configuration options.

To prevent old configuration information or object files from being used, run these commands before rerunning configure:

shell> rm config.cache
shell> make clean

Alternatively, you can run make distclean.

The list below describes some of the problems compiling MySQL that have been found to occur most often:

  • If you get errors when compiling `sql_yacc.cc' such as the ones shown below, you have probably run out of memory or swap space:
    Internal compiler error: program cc1plus got fatal signal 11
      or
    Out of virtual memory
      or
    Virtual memory exhausted
    
    The problem is that gcc requires huge amounts of memory to compile `sql_yacc.cc' with inline functions. Try running configure with the --with-low-memory option:
    shell> ./configure --with-low-memory
    
    This option causes -fno-inline to be added to the compile line if you are using gcc and -O0 if you are using something else. You should try the --with-low-memory option even if you have so much memory and swap space that you think you can't possibly have run out. This problem has been observed to occur even on systems with generous hardware configurations, and the --with-low-memory option usually fixes it.
  • By default, configure picks c++ as the compiler name and GNU c++ links with -lg++. If you are using gcc, that behavior can cause problems during configuration such as this:
    configure: error: installation or configuration problem:
    C++ compiler cannot create executables.
    
    You might also observe problems during compilation related to g++, libg++ or libstdc++. One cause of these problems is that you may not have g++, or you may have g++ but not libg++ or libstdc++. Take a look at the `config.log' file. It should contain the exact reason why your c++ compiler didn't work! To work around these problems, you can use gcc as your C++ compiler. Try setting the environment variable CXX to "gcc -O3". For example:
    shell> CXX="gcc -O3" ./configure
    
    This works because gcc compiles C++ sources as well as g++ does, but does not link in libg++ or libstdc++ by default. Another way to fix these problems, of course, is to install g++, libg++ and libstdc++.
  • If your compile fails with errors such as any of the following, you must upgrade your version of make to GNU make:
    making all in mit-pthreads
    make: Fatal error in reader: Makefile, line 18:
    Badly formed macro assignment
      or
    make: file `Makefile' line 18: Must be a separator (:
      or
    pthread.h: No such file or directory
    
    Solaris and FreeBSD are known to have troublesome make programs. GNU make version 3.75 is known to work.
  • If you want to define flags to be used by your C or C++ compilers, do so by adding the flags to the CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS environment variables. You can also specify the compiler names this way using CC and CXX. For example:
    shell> CC=gcc
    shell> CFLAGS=-O6
    shell> CXX=gcc
    shell> CXXFLAGS=-O6
    shell> export CC CFLAGS CXX CXXFLAGS
    
    See 4.14 TcX binaries, for a list of flag definitions that have been found to be useful on various systems.
  • If you get an error message like this, you need to upgrade your gcc compiler:
    client/libmysql.c:273: parse error before `__attribute__'
    
    gcc 2.8.1 is known to work, but we recommend using egcs 1.0.3a or newer instead.
  • If you get errors such as those shown below when compiling mysqld, configure didn't correctly detect the type of the last argument to accept(), getsockname() or getpeername():
    cxx: Error: mysqld.cc, line 645: In this statement, the referenced
         type of the pointer value "&length" is "unsigned long", which
         is not compatible with "int".
    new_sock = accept(sock, (struct sockaddr *)&cAddr, &length);
    
    To fix this, edit the `config.h' file (which is generated by configure). Look for these lines:
    /* Define as the base type of the last arg to accept */
    #define SOCKET_SIZE_TYPE XXX
    
    Change XXX to size_t or int, depending on your operating system. (Note that you will have to do this each time you run configure, since configure regenerates `config.h'.)
  • The `sql_yacc.cc' file is generated from `sql_yacc.yy'. Normally the build process doesn't need to create `sql_yacc.cc', because MySQL comes with an already-generated copy. However, if you do need to recreate it, you might encounter this error:
    "sql_yacc.yy", line xxx fatal: default action causes potential...
    
    This is a sign that your version of yacc is deficient. You probably need to install bison (the GNU version of yacc) and use that instead.
  • If you need to debug mysqld or a MySQL client, run configure with the --with-debug option, then recompile and link your clients with the new client library. G.2 Debugging a MySQL client.