Mac OS X - EnvironmentError: mysql_config not found

I am running Python 3.6 on MacOS Catalina. My issue was that I tried to install mysqlclient==1.4.2.post1 and it keeps throwing mysql_config not found error.

This is the steps I took to solve the issue.

  1. Install mysql-connector-c using brew (if you have mysql already install unlink first brew unlink mysql) - brew install mysql-connector-c
  2. Open mysql_config and edit the file around line 112
# Create options 
libs="-L$pkglibdir"
libs="$libs -lmysqlclient -lssl -lcrypto"
  1. brew info openssl - this will give you more information on what needs to be done about putting openssl in PATH
  2. in relation to step 3, you need to do this to put openssl in PATH - echo 'export PATH="/usr/local/opt/openssl/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile
  3. for compilers to find openssl - export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/openssl/lib"
  4. for compilers to find openssl - export CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/opt/openssl/include"

Ok, well, first of all, let me check if I am on the same page as you:

  • You installed python
  • You did brew install mysql
  • You did export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/mysql/bin
  • And finally, you did pip install MySQL-Python (or pip3 install mysqlclient if using python 3)

If you did all those steps in the same order, and you still got an error, read on to the end, if, however, you did not follow these exact steps try, following them from the very beginning.

So, you followed the steps, and you're still geting an error, well, there are a few things you could try:

  1. Try running which mysql_config from bash. It probably won't be found. That's why the build isn't finding it either. Try running locate mysql_config and see if anything comes back. The path to this binary needs to be either in your shell's $PATH environment variable, or it needs to be explicitly in the setup.py file for the module assuming it's looking in some specific place for that file.

  2. Instead of using MySQL-Python, try using 'mysql-connector-python', it can be installed using pip install mysql-connector-python. More information on this can be found here and here.

  3. Manually find the location of 'mysql/bin', 'mysql_config', and 'MySQL-Python', and add all these to the $PATH environment variable.

  4. If all above steps fail, then you could try installing 'mysql' using MacPorts, in which case the file 'mysql_config' would actually be called 'mysql_config5', and in this case, you would have to do this after installing: export PATH=$PATH:/opt/local/lib/mysql5/bin. You can find more details here.

Note1: I've seen some people saying that installing python-dev and libmysqlclient-dev also helped, however I do not know if these packages are available on Mac OS.

Note2: Also, make sure to try running the commands as root.

I got my answers from (besides my brain) these places (maybe you could have a look at them, to see if it would help): 1, 2, 3, 4.

I hoped I helped, and would be happy to know if any of this worked, or not. Good luck.


I had been debugging this problem forever - 3 hours 17 mins. What particularly annoyed me was that I already had sql installed on my system through prior uni work but pip/pip3 wasn't recognising it. These threads above and many other I scoured the internet for were helpful in eluminating the problem but didn't actually solve things.

ANSWER

Pip is looking for mysql binaries in the Homebrew Directory which is located relative to Macintosh HD @

/usr/local/Cellar/

so I found that this requires you making a few changes

step 1: Download MySql if not already done so https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/

Step 2: Locate it relative to Macintosh HD and cd 

/usr/local/mysql/bin

Step 3: Once there open terminal and use a text editor of choice - I'm a neovim guy myself so I typed (doesn't automatically come with Mac... another story for another day)

nvim mysql_config

Step 4: You will see at approx line 112

# Create options 
libs="-L$pkglibdir"
libs="$libs -l "

Change to

# Create options 
libs="-L$pkglibdir"
libs="$libs -lmysqlclient -lssl -lcrypto"

*you'll notice that this file has read-only access so if your using vim or neovim

:w !sudo tee %

Step 5: Head to the home directory and edit the .bash_profile file

cd ~

Then

nvim .bash_profile

and add

export PATH="/usr/local/mysql/bin:$PATH"

to the file then save

Step 6: relative to Macintosh HD locate paths and add to it

cd /private/etc/

then 

nvim paths

and add 

/usr/local/mysql/bin

*you'll again notice that this file has read-only access so if your using vim or neovim

:w !sudo tee %

then

cd ~

then refresh the terminal with your changes by running 

source .bash_profile

Finally

pip3 install mysqlclient

And Viola. Remember it's a vibe.


If you don't want to install full mysql, we can fix this by just installing mysqlclient brew install mysqlclient Once cmd is completed it will ask to add below line to ~/.bash_profile:

echo 'export PATH="/usr/local/opt/mysql-client/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile

Close terminal and start new terminal and proceed with pip install mysqlclient

Tags:

Python

Mysql

Macos

Django

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