Installing MySQL from source on OS X

While MAMP has proven to be very convenient for doing local development, not having the MySQL header files around sometimes causes difficulty when it comes time to install/compile something that needs those header files to be in place.

Getting Ready
I always set up a src directory under my user account for these installations.

> cd ~
> mkdir src
> cd src


Download MySQL Community Edition
At the time of this writing, it could be found at http://mysql.mirrors.hoobly.com/Downloads/MySQL-5.1/mysql-5.1.45.tar.gz

Download this file into your src directory.

> curl -O http://mysql.mirrors.hoobly.com/Downloads/MySQL-5.1/mysql-5.1.45.tar.gz


Untar, configure, and install

> tar -xvzf mysql-5.1.45.tar.gz
> cd mysql-5.1.45
> ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql --with-extra-charsets=complex \
--enable-thread-safe-client --enable-local-infile --enable-shared \
--with-plugins=innobase

> make
> sudo make install

> cd /usr/local/mysql
> sudo ./bin/mysql_install_db --user=mysql
> sudo chown -R mysql ./var
> cd ..


MAMP specific issue

Given that I had installed MAMP previously, I had modified my /etc/my.cnf to specify that the mysql.sock was located in /Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock. I modified this line to point to /usr/local/mysql/var/mysql.sock, and then set the sticky bit on the var directory.

> chmod 1777 /usr/local/mysql/var


There are other steps that can be added so that mysqld launches on startup, but I prefer to start it manually when it is needed.