I typically have installed things by hand (wget, untar, configure, make, make install, etc) but more recently I've felt that 99% of the time, the ports folks are getting it right and I'd just be wasting time doing it by hand.

However, getting used to the new paths and ways that other people do it isn't always so easy! Your post was pretty informative regarding that.

Thought I should mention that (at least according to this message: http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-users/2007-April/002829.h... ) the +server flag does still seem to be important if you want to launch mysql at startup.

Also, if you could mention the whole thing about the client being 'mysql5' (having the major version number after the executable... maybe aliasing it if the user only plans on using one version on their system), and possibly also about restarting to make sur the .sock file is properly created...

Again, the whole ports thing is almost more pain than it's worth, at least while doing it for the first time. :( So, thanks for this resource!