You only need to build Connector/ODBC from source on Windows to modify the source or installation location. If you are unsure whether to install from source, please use the binary installation detailed in Section 21.1.3.1, "Installing Connector/ODBC on Windows".

Building Connector/ODBC from source on Windows requires a number of different tools and packages:

Build Steps

Set the environment variables for the Visual Studio toolchain. Visual Studio includes a batch file to set these for you, and installs a Start menu shortcut that opens a command prompt with these variables set.

Set MYSQL_DIR to the MySQL server installation path, while using the short-style file names. For example:

C:\> set
        MYSQL_DIR=C:\PROGRA~1\MySQL\MYSQLS~1.0

Build Connector/ODBC using the cmake command-line tool by executing the following from the source root directory (in a command prompt window):

C:\> cmake -G "Visual Studio 8 2005"

This produces a project file that you can open with Visual Studio, or build from the command line with either of the following commands:

C:\> devenv.com MySQL_Connector_ODBC.sln /build
        ReleaseC:\> devenv.com MySQL_Connector_ODBC.sln /build
        RelWithDebInfo

To compile a debug build, set the cmake build type so that the correct versions of the MySQL client libraries are used:

C:\> cmake -G "Visual Studio 8 2005"
        -DWITH_DEBUG=1C:\> devenv.com MySQL_Connector_ODBC.sln /build
        Debug

Upon completion, the executables are in the bin/ and lib/ subdirectories.

See Section 21.1.3.1.2, "Installing the Windows Connector/ODBC Driver Using the Zipped DLL Package" for the copy commands to complete the installation.