[R-sig-DB] Connect R to MySQL DB installed via XAMPP

[Gabor Grothendieck]

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 9:00 AM, julien cuisinier
<j_cuisinier using hotmail.com> wrote:
> Many thanks both for your feedback.
>
> It must be said that the install of RMySQL on Windows is much more
> convoluted than what  R used us to...& it was working "off the shelve" (with
> the usual simple install.packkages())  in previous versions of R under
> windows, hence the confusion I think (mine at least)....
>
> sorry for the unecessary noise
>

RMySQL has to be compiled against the same version of MySQL that is in
use.  Previously RMySQL was pre-compiled against a specific version of
MySQL and it only worked for users with that version of MySQL.  This
caused no end of problems since there are many versions of MySQL in
use and it only worked for that one.

Now that there is no binary and everyone must compile it from source
there are no longer any version synchronization problems.  The main
source of problems now is from people who do not read the installation
instructions that come with the package. It would be possible to
compile a binary for every version of MySQL out there but that is just
too much work for a free project and even then you would probably find
people downloading the wrong binary and would lead to no end of
support problems with figuring out which binary goes with which
installation.

Now the user simply sets an environment variable to tell it where to
find the MySQL dll's and then installs RMySQL from source.  As a
result there are never any such issues as compiling it against the
MySQL dll's on your system ensures that everything is in sync.   That
completely clears up the many problems that previously existed --
provided one actually reads the installation instructions that come
with the package.

Suggest you head over to the RMySQL CRAN page at
http://cran.r-project.org/package=RMySQL and actually read the
installation instructions (under the Installation: link)..  They are
also in the INSTALL file in the source distribution.

-- 
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