Error installing mysqlclient for python on Ubuntu 18.04 - mysql

Question

I installed Python 2.7.15rci and Python 3.6.7 on Ubuntu. When i did 'pip list' on virtualenv it returns me:
Django (2.1.5)
pip (9.0.1)
pkg-resources (0.0.0)
pytz (2018.9)
setuptools (39.0.1)
wheel (0.32.3)
I'm trying to install mysqlclient (pip install mysqlclient) and returns an error.
unable to execute 'x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc': No such file or directory
error: command 'x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc' failed with exit status 1
----------------------------------------
Failed building wheel for mysqlclient
Running setup.py clean for mysqlclient
Failed to build mysqlclient
Installing collected packages: mysqlclient
Running setup.py install for mysqlclient ... error
Complete output from command /home/david/env/project/bin/python3 -u -c "import setuptools, tokenize;__file__='/tmp/pip-build-pq18uxjj/mysqlclient/setup.py';f=getattr(tokenize, 'open', open)(__file__);code=f.read().replace('\r\n', '\n');f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, 'exec'))" install --record /tmp/pip-y28h4ou0-record/install-record.txt --single-version-externally-managed --compile --install-headers /home/david/env/project/include/site/python3.6/mysqlclient:
/usr/lib/python3.6/distutils/dist.py:261: UserWarning: Unknown distribution option: 'long_description_content_type'
warnings.warn(msg)
running install
running build
running build_py
creating build
creating build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.6
creating build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.6/MySQLdb
copying MySQLdb/__init__.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.6/MySQLdb
copying MySQLdb/_exceptions.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.6/MySQLdb
copying MySQLdb/compat.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.6/MySQLdb
copying MySQLdb/connections.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.6/MySQLdb
copying MySQLdb/converters.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.6/MySQLdb
copying MySQLdb/cursors.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.6/MySQLdb
copying MySQLdb/release.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.6/MySQLdb
copying MySQLdb/times.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.6/MySQLdb
creating build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.6/MySQLdb/constants
copying MySQLdb/constants/__init__.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.6/MySQLdb/constants
copying MySQLdb/constants/CLIENT.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.6/MySQLdb/constants
copying MySQLdb/constants/CR.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.6/MySQLdb/constants
copying MySQLdb/constants/ER.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.6/MySQLdb/constants
copying MySQLdb/constants/FIELD_TYPE.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.6/MySQLdb/constants
copying MySQLdb/constants/FLAG.py -> build/lib.linux-x86_64-3.6/MySQLdb/constants
running build_ext
building 'MySQLdb._mysql' extension
creating build/temp.linux-x86_64-3.6
creating build/temp.linux-x86_64-3.6/MySQLdb
x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc -pthread -DNDEBUG -g -fwrapv -O2 -Wall -g -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security -Wdate-time -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fPIC -Dversion_info=(1,4,1,'final',0) -D__version__=1.4.1 -I/usr/include/mysql -I/home/david/env/project/include -I/usr/include/python3.6m -c MySQLdb/_mysql.c -o build/temp.linux-x86_64-3.6/MySQLdb/_mysql.o
unable to execute 'x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc': No such file or directory
error: command 'x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc' failed with exit status 1
----------------------------------------
Command "/home/david/env/project/bin/python3 -u -c "import setuptools, tokenize;__file__='/tmp/pip-build-pq18uxjj/mysqlclient/setup.py';f=getattr(tokenize, 'open', open)(__file__);code=f.read().replace('\r\n', '\n');f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, 'exec'))" install --record /tmp/pip-y28h4ou0-record/install-record.txt --single-version-externally-managed --compile --install-headers /home/david/env/project/include/site/python3.6/mysqlclient" failed with error code 1 in /tmp/pip-build-pq18uxjj/mysqlclient/
So, I have tried different methods found like:
sudo apt-get install python-dev
sudo apt-get install python3-dev
sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev
and some more... but none of them work for me and the problem persists.
Any suggestions?
Thank you!

Answer 1

gcc is part of the build-essential package, which you should install before anything else:
sudo apt-get install build-essential
UPDATE: Following #bosnjak's suggestion, you also might need to install the openssl developer tools:
sudo apt-get install libssl-dev

Answer 2

I specified the particular version of python it's 3.7
And that helped me
I have installed these ones:
sudo apt-get install python3.7-dev libmysqlclient-dev
And then installed mysqlclient by:
pip install mysqlclient

Answer 3

I turned out, that the solution is slightly different for almost every Python version. For those using different versions, such as Python 2.x, 3.5 or 3.7 I found this:
Part I
For Python 2.x use:
$ sudo apt-get install python-dev
For Python 2.7 use:
$ sudo apt-get install libffi-dev
For Python 3.x use:
$ sudo apt-get install python3-dev
For Python 3.4 use:
$ sudo apt-get install python3.4-dev
For Python 3.7 use:
$ sudo apt-get install python3.7-dev
For Python 3.8 use:
$ sudo apt-get install python3.8-dev
For Python 3.9 use:
$ sudo apt-get install python3.9-dev
Part II
If this still doesn't help, others have pointed out to install
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential
and finally
$ sudo apt-get install libssl-dev
But the last two didn't help myself - but hoping this might help you!

Answer 4

You may do this before:
sudo apt-get install python3-dev default-libmysqlclient-dev build-essential
Source: https://pypi.org/project/mysqlclient/

Answer 5

This issue was persistent in Ubuntu and python 3+. In my case, I was using Ubuntu 18.04 and found this solution to be useful for python version 3.7.5
Step 1. Install libpython3.7-dev via sudo apt
> sudo apt-get install libpython3.7-dev
Step 2: Install mysqlclient
> python3 -m pip install mysqlclient==1.4.6

Answer 6

I wanted to install the 'Modoboa' mail-server package (https://github.com/modoboa/modoboa) on my Ubuntu 18.04 with Apache as my webserver, instead of nginx. I needed mysqlclient for Python 2.7. The following packages worked for me:
sudo apt-get install libssl-dev gcc python2.7-dev libmysqlclient-dev

Answer 7

I'm using the python3.8. Similarly to david's answer, use the following command then it works.
$ sudo apt-get install python3.8-dev