How do I address "OSError: mysql_config not found" error during Elastic Beanstalk deployment?

Question

Problem

I am trying to deploy a very simple app on Elastic Beanstalk with a small database backend. I try to install mysqlclient as part of the process outlined by AWS here. However, when I deploy my app, I get the following error from my Elastic Beanstalk logs as it tries to download the package:

Collecting mysqlclient
  Using cached mysqlclient-2.0.1.tar.gz (87 kB)

2020/08/21 20:30:16.419082 [ERROR] An error occurred during execution of command [app-deploy] - [InstallDependency]. Stop running the command. Error: fail to install dependencies with requirements.txt file with error Command /bin/sh -c /var/app/venv/staging-LQM1lest/bin/pip install -r requirements.txt failed with error exit status 1. Stderr:    ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1:
     command: /var/app/venv/staging-LQM1lest/bin/python -c 'import sys, setuptools, tokenize; sys.argv[0] = '"'"'/tmp/pip-install-bz45889a/mysqlclient/setup.py'"'"'; __file__='"'"'/tmp/pip-install-bz45889a/mysqlclient/setup.py'"'"';f=getattr(tokenize, '"'"'open'"'"', open)(__file__);code=f.read().replace('"'"'\r\n'"'"', '"'"'\n'"'"');f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, '"'"'exec'"'"'))' egg_info --egg-base /tmp/pip-pip-egg-info-1tyle8mv
         cwd: /tmp/pip-install-bz45889a/mysqlclient/
    Complete output (12 lines):
    /bin/sh: mysql_config: command not found
    /bin/sh: mariadb_config: command not found
    /bin/sh: mysql_config: command not found
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
      File "/tmp/pip-install-bz45889a/mysqlclient/setup.py", line 15, in <module>
        metadata, options = get_config()
      File "/tmp/pip-install-bz45889a/mysqlclient/setup_posix.py", line 65, in get_config
        libs = mysql_config("libs")
      File "/tmp/pip-install-bz45889a/mysqlclient/setup_posix.py", line 31, in mysql_config
        raise OSError("{} not found".format(_mysql_config_path))
    OSError: mysql_config not found

Question

The mysqlclient is the AWS recommended driver to connect to a MySQL database in RDS using Flask or Django. How do I get it installed with Elastic Beanstalk?

Context

I've tried to implement my architecture with either (1) a database within the Elastic Beanstalk environment or (2) a regularly deployed RDS instance outside the Elastic Beanstalk environment. In this case, we're going with option (1).

I can't install mysql-server or other packages using apt-get as suggested here very easily, which is why I hope this isn't labeled as a duplicate. I don't have access to the underlying servers. I attempted to using platform hooks and .ebextensions, but I wasn't able to get that to work. In this post, I'm trying to step back and see if there is another avenue.

Answer 1

For Amazon linux 2 you should be able to install it with yum. Thus, you can have in your .ebextensions a file called, e.g. 01_packages.config with the content:

packages: 
    yum:
        MySQL-python: []

You can add further yum dependencies if you require more.