mysqlclient library linkage problem

Question

I am linking an application with mysqlclient library on 64-bit CentOS 5.4 and get a linkage error (cannot find -lmysqlclient). The library is in /usr/lib64/mysql/:

una@localhost$ ll /usr/lib64/mysql/
total 9072
    ...
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      26 Jan  3 15:54 libmysqlclient_r.so -> libmysqlclient_r.so.15.0.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      26 Jan  3 15:54 libmysqlclient_r.so.15 -> libmysqlclient_r.so.15.0.0
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1518456 Sep  4 01:28 libmysqlclient_r.so.15.0.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      24 Jan  3 15:54 libmysqlclient.so -> libmysqlclient.so.15.0.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      24 Jan  3 15:54 libmysqlclient.so.15 -> libmysqlclient.so.15.0.0
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1514000 Sep  4 01:28 libmysqlclient.so.15.0.0
     ...

And the directory seems to be properly registered for Linux linker:

una@localhost$ cat /etc/ld.so.conf.d/mysql-x86_64.conf 
/usr/lib64/mysql

The only way I can link the application on this machine is by specifying the full path to the library file which is unacceptable in my case. What could cause the problem here?

Thanks.

Answer 1

-L/usr/lib64/mysql

The ld.so.conf stuff is only used at runtime, not compile time.

Answer 2

/usr/lib64/mysql is certainly not in your gcc's default search path. You may use a autoconf script to search for the installation path of libmysqlclient on this kind of a distribution, and dynamically use the found location with the -L flag.