Now that there is a dmg for Leopard, you shouldn’t have to download and compile the source for MySQL anymore:

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html#macosx-dmg

if you intend to use it with Python at all do not install the 64 bit version unless you have the 64 bit version of Python. The default install of Python is 32 bit on Leopard.  Doing so will make it impossible to use the MySQLdb Python bindings.

Even though we have a nice installer now, there are some slight problems with it. For starters, I don’t like having to start the server manually every time I boot up. There is a System Preferences add-in that adds a start up item but it is broken in the current version of the installer:

http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=2500

There is a fix out, you just have to install it yourself:

ftp://ftp.mysql.com/pub/mysql/download/gui-tools/MySQL.prefPane-leopardfix.zip