mySQL and Python 2.2

[Gerhard Häring]

In article <Elzj9.128797$ub2.2802895 at news1.tin.it>, Alex Martelli wrote:
> Greg & Janet LINDSTROM wrote:
> 
>> Hello-
>> I am trying to convert from gadfly to mySQL for my database needs on
>> my Windows 98 box. I have installed mySQL and it works (I have
>> created my tables and can manipulate them manually), and have
>> downloaded mySQL-python-0.9.1, but when I python setup.py build, I
>> get an error about cl.exe not existing (and, sure enough, it
>> doesn't :-).
>
> If you don't have a C compiler, you can't build C-coded Python
> extensions from sources:

C compilers for Windows are available relatively cheaply at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw ;-)

> you need to find and install pre-built
> binary versions of those extensions for the Python version you
> are using.  You can find many such versions listed at (LONG
> URL, mail sw might break it -- if so, then rejoin it...):
> 
> http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=22307&release_id=102893

Yep. I've just sent 0.9.2 binaries to the maintainer and I think they'll show
up there soon. Btw. these binaries are the same I have on my homepage.

> [...] I think you can also find pre-built binaries of MySQLdb 0.9.2, for
> example at Gerhard Häring's page, but I'm not sure about the details --
> Gerhard mentions said binaries at http://www.cs.fhm.edu/~ifw00065/news.shtml
> but gives no link and I can't find them.

You're not a true hacker :-P Else you'd have looked at the HTML code and seen
that the download link was only commented out. The reason was that they
depended on a libz.dll which normally isn't available on Windows systems:

I've been trying to get away from MSVC++ for building Free Software like MySQL.
Unfortunately, MySQL cannot be built out of the box using mingw on Windows, so
I needed to use a third-party patch against MySQL to get at least the MySQL
client libraries built.

Building MySQLdb (the Python adapter) itself using mingw is no problem
afterwards. But unfortunately, the MySQL client library I built was for some
reason dynamically linked against a libz.dll, which caused problems for Windows
users. Which is why I (and Andy) pulled back the previous 0.9.2 binaries.

After a very loud aaaaaaaaaaaaargh and a month later I've now given in and
built statically linked MySQLdb 0.9.2 binaries with MS Visual C++. And removed
the HTML comment on my homepage ;-)

-- Gerhard