Install MySQL for Python (MySQLdb) on Windows XP

There is no binary distribution of MySQLdb for Python 2.6 on Windows. I have to build it from the source. My environment is Windows XP. MySQL 5.1. Python 2.6 (windows version, not cygwin), and MySQL-python-1.2.3c1. Also, I have Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition (Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0) installed, which is required to compile the C code in MySQL-python.
First of all, install Python setuptools, if you haven’t installed it. It is required in MySQL-python setup.py. I also added C:\Python26\Scripts into environment PATH, where easy_install is installed.
Then, make sure you have MySQL Developer Components installed. Download MySQL msi installer version, select “Developer Components” in Custom Setup. It will install C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.1\include, lib\debug and lib\opt for you. They are not installed by default.
Uncompress MySQL-python-1.2.3c1.tar.gz into a directory. Open a command window (cmd), change to the directory.
Try to run,
setup.py build
I got this error in setup_windows.py:
in get_config
serverKey = _winreg.OpenKey(_winreg.HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, options['registry_key'])
WindowsError: [Error 2] The system cannot find the file specified
So I edited site.cfg, changed the MySQL version from 5.0 to 5.1 (since I am using 5.1)
registry_key = SOFTWARE\MySQL AB\MySQL Server 5.1
You can use regedit to check which version you are using. It is specified at: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/MySQL AB/MySQL Server 5.1.
Now try to build it again. I got this error:
build\temp.win32-2.6\Release\_mysql.pyd.manifest : general error c1010070: Failed to load and parse the manifest. The system cannot find the file specified.
error: command ‘mt.exe’ failed with exit status 31
To fix this problem, go to C:\Python26\Lib\distutils, edit msvc9compiler.py, search for ‘MANIFESTFILE’, you will find the following line
ld_args.append(‘/MANIFESTFILE:’ + temp_manifest)
Then append the following line after the above line,
ld_args.append(‘/MANIFEST’)
Then go back to run “setup.py build”, it will succeed. Finally, run
setup.py install
Test it in python
>>> import MySQLdb
>>>