Compiling method and mysql on OSX

[Benjamin Martens]

I have a headless server at home running my MySQL database for
gnucash, which I access from my windows laptop.  This all works quite
well.  My challenge came up when trying to get my wife and her MacBook
Pro (Intel, 64 bit, OSX -Snow Leopard) on to this as well.


Having never built for Mac before (I have some background in Linux, as
well as Windows), I'm sure I've done several things the long way, but
jhbuild seems to be quite onerous when it comes to dependencies.
Being 64-bit certainly doesn't help with this either, nor does having
OSX 10.6.8 installed on that laptop.  I don't have a 32 bit machine to
build on.


Someone I know at Apple asked me why jhbuild was being used (as he had
many similar problems with dependencies with it in the past in his own
projects), rather than something like homebrew, which handles
dependencies much better.


My question:  Has there been much thought/discussion into this?   Is
it an issue of needing motivated individuals to implement the switch,
or is there a reason why jhbuild is better for the task?


--


A related question:  Is it possible to supply a regular (32-bit) OSX
package with mySQL support built-in?  I assume that this would require
the user to install actual mySQL support on their mac, and place the
correct driver/links in place, but honestly this would be WAY easier
and more straight forward for the end user.


Thanks for your comments!
-Ben