The MySQL driver for LibreOffice. It ships as an extension (.oxt file). == Requirements == The MySQL driver for LibreOffice (MySQL Connector/LibreOffice - C/LibO) requires two external libraries to be build: 1) The MySQL Client Library (libmysql) 2) The MySQL Connector/C++ Library (libmysqlcppconn) libmysql is not included as an external and needs to be provided by the build environment, but libmysqlcppconn is provided as an external and will be automatically compiled if you pass "--without-system-mysql-cppconn" to autogen.sh. The MySQL driver for LibreOffice does not reimplement the MySQL Client/Server communication protocol. The protocol implementation is part of the MySQL Client Library. The SDBC(X) driver is implemented as a wrapper of the MySQL Connector/C++ Library which implements a JDBC-like interface (which suits SDBC(X) well) and which in turn uses the C based MySQL Client Library. == Variants == If configured with --with-system-mysql, the driver will *not* ship a copy of the MySQL client C library and will expect it to be installed in a standard location on each system that it runs on. That is usually the right choice to create a native package/port for GNU/Linux, BSD, etc, where the packaging system handles dependencies and will ensure the availability of the MySQL client C library in the standard location. If configured with --with-libmysql-path, the driver will ship a copy of the MySQL client C library so that it works "out of the box" on any system. That is usually the right choice to create a stand-alone .oxt file that users can just install through the LibreOffice extensions manager, as is typical for Microsoft Windows and Apple MacOS X native (as opposed to MacPorts/fink/pkgsrc/...). == Installing the Requirements == On modern/free-as-in-free-speech Unices, libmysql and libmysqlcppconn are probably available as a package/port. Install them using your distribution's tools. Make sure to install the development packages (whose name usually ends with -dev or -devel), and not only the libraries themselves. You can use --with-system-mysql or --with-libmysql-path=/usr/ (but not both). Else you can install the MySQL Client Library from official MySQL packages at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/c/ . They have source and binary distributions for several platforms. You can also install the MySQL Client Library (libmysql) as part of the MySQL Server, version 5.0 or later. Check the MySQL manual for instructions: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/installing.html The typical installation path of the libmysql.so on Unix is /usr/local/mysql/lib/mysql/ .