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RMySQL is the database interface and MySQL driver for R. If you don’t already have MySQL libraries and try to install it, you could get an error like:

> install.packages("RMySQL")
Configuration error:
  could not find the MySQL installation include and/or library
  directories.  Manually specify the location of the MySQL
  libraries and the header files and re-run R CMD INSTALL.
 
INSTRUCTIONS:
 
1. Define and export the 2 shell variables PKG_CPPFLAGS and
   PKG_LIBS to include the directory for header files (*.h)
   and libraries, for example (using Bourne shell syntax):
 
      export PKG_CPPFLAGS="-I<MySQL-include-dir>"
      export PKG_LIBS="-L<MySQL-lib-dir> -lmysqlclient"
 
   Re-run the R INSTALL command:
 
      R CMD INSTALL RMySQL_<version>.tar.gz
 
2. Alternatively, you may pass the configure arguments
      --with-mysql-dir=<base-dir> (distribution directory)
   or
      --with-mysql-inc=<base-inc> (where MySQL header files reside)
      --with-mysql-lib=<base-lib> (where MySQL libraries reside)
   in the call to R INSTALL --configure-args='...'
 
   R CMD INSTALL --configure-args='--with-mysql-dir=DIR' RMySQL_<version>.tar.gz
 
ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘RMySQL’
* removing ‘/home/patlaf/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.0/RMySQL’
Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package ‘RMySQL’ had non-zero exit status
 
The downloaded source packages are in
    ‘/tmp/RtmpZQyvFJ/downloaded_packages’

This is because the installation don’t find the required MySQL C API libraries. You can manually download them and specify the path as arguments, but a much simpler way is to use apt-get:

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev

1	sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev

Then, in your R environment you can reinstall the package!

Install RMySQL on Ubuntu