MySQL and DBD::mysql on Mac OS X


I’ve been investigating some recent issues with installations of MySQL on Mac OS X and the Perl DBD::mysql module for accessing MySQL from within Perl through DBI. The problem exists only with binary distributions of MySQL and is related to the installation location of the libraries for the MySQL client that DBD::mysql uses. By default these are installed into /usr/local/mysql/lib, but the dynamic libraries are configured to be located within /usr/local/mysql/lib/mysql. It’s possible for DBD::mysql to build and link correctly, but trying to use the library will fail because it can’t find the library in the latter directory, even though it linked to the library in the former location. To get round this, the easiest method is to create a link within the directory that points to the parent. For example:

$ cd /usr/local/mysql/lib$ ln -s . mysql

That should fix the problem whether you run the commands before the DBD::mysql build or after it.