The client library, part 4: How to write a simple MySQL client in C using CMake and pkg-config
The client library — libmysqlclient — is part of the same source code repository as the server. It comes both as a dynamic link library (.so), also called a shared library, and as a static link library (.a). During the 5.7 development cycle, we’ve made several improvements to the library, which has resulted in a bump from ABI version 18 to version 20.… Source: mysqlserverteam.com