MySQL Install: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension

Question

I\'m trying to get MySQL installed to the latest version due to some installation going wrong somewhere along the line. I run the command gem install mysql and

Answer 1

First of all you need to differentiate between the MySQL as Server, MySQL as Client and the Ruby bindings to MySQL.

I'm not familiar with Mac, but for *nix OS you need to install MySQL through your package manager. To get the Ruby bindings installed with

gem install mysql

you need the development headers of ruby (in Ubuntu it is the package ruby-dev) and the development headers of the MySQL-Client (currently libmysqlclient16-dev in Ubuntu). I don't know if they are named different on Mac, but after you got those installed the Ruby bindings should install without any error.