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MySQLdb (Python module) on OSX

I’m working on a database for our CoalHMM analysis results.  Right now, I’m playing around with different database designs, so I want to play around with the database on my local machine rather than our shared server.

I used to just do this on Linux, but this is the first time I’m playing with MySQL on OS X.

Installing MySQL was pretty painless as you can download a binary package for it.

MySQLdb, the Python module I use to access the database, is a different matter, however.  I couldn’t find any binary packages and the source distribution doesn’t compile out of the box.

Luckily, I am not the first to want to use MySQLdb on a Mac, and a bit of googling found this page.

Worked like a charm, so now I am back to hacking data base designs.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 at 11:15 am and is filed under Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “MySQLdb (Python module) on OSX”

  1. amix Says:
    March 25th, 2009 at 11:20 pm

    You can do “sudo easy_install MySQL-python” – this will install and build MySQLdb for you. If you haven’t heard about easy_install, check out http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/EasyInstall

    A tip: Make sure to run the latest beta of MySQLdb – the current stable has a very nasty memory leak which basically leaks memory on each fetched result set…

  2. Thomas Mailund Says:
    March 26th, 2009 at 8:35 am

    Thanks for the link, Amir. I had never heard about EasyInstall.

    I’ll keep the memleak in mind. For the experiments I’m doing right now it isn’t so much an issue, but it will be when I get to the actual analysis. That wont run on my home computer, though, but I’ll check the MySQLdb installation on the grid where I run it before I start…

  3. gioby Says:
    March 26th, 2009 at 5:14 pm

    yes, easy_install is really great and supports a lot of modules.

    I also prefer sqlalchemy to the raw mysqldb – it has a better syntax and is said to be a good example of python programming.
    Elixir, a sqlalchemy plugin, is also great:
    - http://elixir.ematia.de/trac/wiki/TutorialDivingIn
    - http://bioinfoblog.it/2009/01/python-and-databases/

  4. Thomas Mailund Says:
    March 26th, 2009 at 5:34 pm

    Thanks for the links, gioby, they look interesting.

    I don’t really need any complex ORM, though, for this database. The data really is quite simple, there is just a hell of a lot of it.

    I don’t want to tie myself to Python for the project either, since I need at least to access the data in both Python and R. Yeah, I know I can do that with rpy, but I am not the only one analysing the data, and for some weird reason, some of my statistician friends actually prefer R :)

  5. Laurie Carlin Says:
    March 6th, 2010 at 11:44 pm

    This is great! Thanks for your article. I am starting development and this was a big help.

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