MySQL distributions contain a mysqlclient.pc file that provides information about MySQL configuration for use by the pkg-config command. This enables pkg-config to be used as an alternative to mysql_config for obtaining information such as compiler flags or link libraries required to compile MySQL applications. For example, the following pairs of commands are equivalent:

mysql_config --cflags
pkg-config --cflags mysqlclient

mysql_config --libs
pkg-config --libs mysqlclient

The last pkg-config command produces flags for dynamic linking. To produce flags for static linking, use this command:

pkg-config --static --libs mysqlclient

On some platforms, the output with and without --static might be the same.

# For sh, bash, ...
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/mysql/lib/pkgconfig
# For csh, tcsh, ...
setenv PKG_CONFIG_PATH /usr/local/mysql/lib/pkgconfig

The --variable option takes a configuration variable name and displays the variable value:

# installation prefix directory
pkg-config --variable=prefix mysqlclient
# header file directory
pkg-config --variable=includedir mysqlclient
# library directory
pkg-config --variable=libdir mysqlclient

To see which variable values pkg-config can display using the --variable option, use this command:

pkg-config --print-variables mysqlclient

You can use pkg-config within a command line using backticks to include the output that it produces for particular options. For example, to compile and link a MySQL client program, use pkg-config as follows:

gcc -c `pkg-config --cflags mysqlclient` progname.c
gcc -o progname progname.o `pkg-config --libs mysqlclient`