How do I get XAMPP's MySQL and Ruby on Rails work together on my Mac?

Question

I have mysql and apache running through XAMPP on my Mac machine (10.6.4). I usually do PHP development with this setup but
now I want to start out with Ruby on Rails.

Unfortunately I cannot get mysql to work with RoR. I start the mysql Server with XAMPP and when I do "rake db:migrate" I get this output:

!!! The bundled mysql.rb driver has been removed from Rails 2.2. Please install the mysql gem and try again: gem install mysql.
rake aborted!
no such file to load -- mysql

mysql is located in /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/bin and the mysql SOCKET is in /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/var/mysql/mysql.sock

Therefore my database.yml file looks like this:

development:
  adapter: mysql
  database: dbname
  username: dbuser
  password: dbpw
  socket: /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/var/mysql/mysql.sock

I don't think I need to do a "gem install mysql" because mysql is already running with XAMPP. Anyhow I tried but it failed also:

ERROR:  Error installing mysql:
  ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

Answer 1

You need to tell the gem installer the path to your mysql files installed with XAMPP

sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch i386" gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-dir=/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/lib/mysql --with-mysql-lib=/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/lib/mysql/ --with-mysql-include=/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/include/mysql/

Also add the correct socket to your database.yml:

development:
  adapter: mysql2
  encoding: utf8
  database: your_db
  pool: 5
  username: root
  password:
  socket: /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/var/mysql/mysql.sock

After that, run bundle in the rails project again and it should work.