It probably only wanted mysql-client (the API library), not the whole server. At least on debian that's the case. If the distro is not taking care of splitting

It probably only wanted mysql-client (the API library), not the whole server. At least on debian that's the case. If the distro is not taking care of splitting the packages in "dev" (headers and .a files), "client" (.so files), "server", etc. then it'll have such problems. I doubt having few extra kb of client is such a big deal, especially if you decide to use Qt. Also in debian (I think) the Qt sql part is also optional.