Using MySQLdb module with Pypy compiler

Question

I'm trying Pypy compiler to see if I can speed up my code. Nevertheless, I'm having troubles with MySQLdb module, which Pypy is unable to find.

I have read that MySQLdb 1.2.4 should work fine with Pypy, so I upgraded the module, and I tested that it is the right version with CPython compiler:

import MySQLdb
MySQLdb.__version__
>> '1.2.4'

But when using Pypy, I'm getting:

Python 2.7.2 (1.9+dfsg-1, Jun 19 2012, 23:23:45)
[PyPy 1.9.0 with GCC 4.7.0] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
And now for something completely different: ``-FIRST they ignore you, then they
laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.-''
>>>> import MySQLdb
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<console>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: No module named MySQLdb

Any help? I'm running over Ubuntu 13.04 and using Pypy which came into the Canonical repositories.

Answer 1

MySQLdb is mostly written in C which pypy can't use directly. You'd need to patch and recompile it.

The easier solution would be to use a pure python mysql connector library, like pymysql or mysql-connector-python

pymysql can even be used as dropin replacement for MySQLdb, all you need to do add:

import pymysql
pymysql.install_as_MySQLdb()

or put this in a module MySQLdb.py, after that code which imports MySQLdb should work normally.