Hi, I’m running into this blocking issue while setting up Django with MySQL database. I’m pasting here what I tried so far on Ubuntu 18.04 droplet.

$ sudo apt install nginx mysql-server python3-pip python3-dev libmysqlclient-dev 
$ sudo apt install mysql-client
$ sudo mysql_secure_installation
$ sudo mysql ( configured new db requirements )
$ sudo -H pip3 install --upgrade pip
$ sudo -H pip3 install virtualenv
$ pip install django gunicorn mysqlclient (virtualenv) 

This is where mysqlclient was not getting installed. Here is the error snippet.

(vkdev)user@ubuntu-hejjjj:~/testproject$ pip install mysqlclient
Collecting mysqlclient
  Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/d0/97/7326248ac8d5049968bf4ec708a5d3d4806e412a42e74160d7f266a3e03a/mysqlclient-1.4.6.tar.gz
Building wheels for collected packages: mysqlclient
  Building wheel for mysqlclient (setup.py) ... error
  ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1:
.......   
.......
  /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lssl
  /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lcrypto
  collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
  error: command 'x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc' failed with exit status 1
  ----------------------------------------
  ERROR: 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
    ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1:

Since mysqlclient install is failed here, I continued to try these steps but I don’t have luck so far.

$ pip install django gunicorn (virtualenv)
$ sudo apt install python3-dev libmysqlclient-dev
$ sudo apt-get install python3-pymysql
$ sudo apt-get install python3.6-dev
$ sudo apt-get install python3.7-dev libmysqlclient-dev gcc default-libmysqlclient-dev

I appreciate if someone has a clue with appropriate steps.

Thanks