[R] Installing RMySQL on Mac OS X

[Thomas Koepsell]

I could really use some advice about installing the RMySQL package under R 
2.1.0 on Mac OS 10.4.  I get the following message from R when I try:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Configuration error:
    Could not locate the library "libz" required by MySQL.

INSTRUCTIONS:

    The "libz" library is required by the MySQL client library
    in order to compress/uncompress connections between clients
    and the MySQL engine.

    Make sure you have "libz" installed properly and/or included
    in your $LD_LIBRARY_PATH.  Perhaps it is not in any of the
    standard directories (e.g., /usr/lib/, /usr/local/lib)?

Aborting the installation of RMySQL.

ERROR: configuration failed for package 'RMySQL'
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The above message notwithstanding, files that appear in /usr/lib/ on my 
machine include:

   libz.1.1.3.dylib        libz.1.dylib
   libz.1.2.2.dylib        libz.dylib

so libz appears to be there.

An earlier suggestion on this list about changing the environment 
variables PKG_CPPFLAGS and PKG_LIBS had no effect, unfortunately.

I installed R 2.1.0 from a binary download.  The required DBI package is 
installed.  A binary version of RMySQL is not available for Macs, so I am 
trying to install RMySQL from sources.  Before getting Mac OS 10.4, I 
tried the same installation under 10.3 and 10.2 and had the same problem, 
and also with R 2.0.1.

I know others have working installations of RMySQL on their Mac OS X 
systems.  Any tips for getting there would be most welcome.  Thanks!

Tom Koepsell