On Mac OS X, tar cannot handle long filenames. If you need to unpack a .tar.gz distribution, use gnutar instead.
MySQL should work without any problems on Mac OS X 10.x (Darwin).
Our binary for Mac OS X is compiled on Darwin 6.3 with the following configure line:
CC=gcc CFLAGS="-O3 -fno-omit-frame-pointer" CXX=gcc \ CXXFLAGS="-O3 -fno-omit-frame-pointer -felide-constructors \ -fno-exceptions -fno-rtti" \ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql \ --with-extra-charsets=complex --enable-thread-safe-client \ --enable-local-infile --disable-shared
For current versions of Mac OS X Server, no operating system changes are necessary before compiling MySQL. Compiling for the Server platform is the same as for the client version of Mac OS X. (However, note that MySQL comes preinstalled on Mac OS X Server, so you need not build it yourself.)
For older versions (Mac OS X Server 1.2, a.k.a. Rhapsody), you must first install a pthread package before trying to configure MySQL.