How to install gem MySQL on Mac OS 10.6.6

Question

Ruby already installed on Mac. So i just installed rails.

ruby 1.8.7 (2009-06-12 patchlevel 174) [universal-darwin10.0]

rails 2.3.11

gem 1.3.5

When i trying: gem install mysql i get this error:

89-235-235-64:~ vitali$ gem install mysql
WARNING:  Installing to ~/.gem since /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8 and
      /usr/bin aren't both writable.
WARNING:  You don't have /Users/vitali/.gem/ruby/1.8/bin in your PATH,
      gem executables will not run.
Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
ERROR:  Error installing mysql:
    ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/bin/ruby extconf.rb
mkmf.rb can't find header files for ruby at /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/ruby.h


Gem files will remain installed in /Users/vitali/.gem/ruby/1.8/gems/mysql-2.8.1 for inspection.
Results logged to /Users/vitali/.gem/ruby/1.8/gems/mysql-2.8.1/ext/mysql_api/gem_make.out
89-235-235-64:~ vitali$ 

Dont understand what to do. gem install mysql installing without MySQl itself or I should download and install MySQL as prorgamm? If yes, from what resource, what version, how to instal? Please help me, im newbie on mac. Big thanks!

Answer 1

You're almost certainly going to need MySQL installed to have the MySQL gem installed (even better is the mysql2 gem, which Rails also works with - just use mysql2 instead of mysql in your database.yml file).

I find the best way to get MySQL on my Mac whenever I format it (which, admittedly, is rarely) is to use Homebrew . So, if you don't have Homebrew installed, I'd start with that... and once that's done, it should be a matter of running sudo brew install mysql , and running the instructions it provides after the installation is done.