topic Re: Databricks App deployment fails: mysqlclient build error (pkg-config not found) in Data Engineering

Databricks App deployment fails: mysqlclient build error (pkg-config not found)

vamsi_simbus — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 11:35:29 GMT

Hi Community Members,

I’m deploying a Python project as a Databricks App, but deployment fails during dependency installation with:

ERROR: Failed to build 'MySQL client' pkg-config: not found Exception: Can not find valid pkg-config name

The dependency is pulled indirectly via:

ibis-framework[MySQL]

From my understanding, Databricks Apps don’t allow OS-level dependencies, and MySQL client requires native MySQL/MariaDB libraries—so pip fails when trying to build it from source.

Questions:

Are there any supported workarounds for native dependencies in Databricks Apps?
Thanks in advance for your help!

Re: Databricks App deployment fails: mysqlclient build error (pkg-config not found)

vamsi_simbus — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 04:55:15 GMT

Hi All,

I’m still looking for guidance on this issue and haven’t been able to find a solution yet. If anyone has encountered something similar or has suggestions on how I can troubleshoot this further, I’d really appreciate your help.

Please let me know if more details, logs, or code snippets would be helpful — I can share whatever is needed.

Thanks !

Re: Databricks App deployment fails: mysqlclient build error (pkg-config not found)

aleksandra_ch — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 16:50:26 GMT

Hi @vamsi_simbus ,

Databricks Apps don’t yet support installing OS-level packages (apt-get, pkg-config, native client libs).

Could you try to install a Python native MySQL client as a backend of ibis:

Install the core framework only: ibis-framework
Install the mysql connector: PyMySQL
When you connect, you must explicitly tell Ibis to use the pymysql driver by adding it to the connection URL. This prevents Ibis from looking for the default system-level drivers:
import ibis # Format: mysql+pymysql://user:pass@host:port/database con = ibis.connect("mysql+pymysql://root:password@localhost:3306/my_db")

Please let me know if it helps.

Best regards,