homebrew.mxcl.mysql.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>KeepAlive</key>
  <true/>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>homebrew.mxcl.mysql</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>/usr/local/opt/mysql/bin/mysqld_safe</string>
    <string>--bind-address=127.0.0.1</string>
    <string>--datadir=/usr/local/var/mysql</string>
    <string>--innodb_file_format=Barracuda</string>
    <string>--innodb_large_prefix=ON</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
  <key>WorkingDirectory</key>
  <string>/usr/local/var/mysql</string>
</dict>
</plist>

mysql2_row_format_dynamic.rb

ActiveSupport.on_load(:active_record) do
  ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::AbstractMysqlAdapter.class_eval do
    def create_table(table_name, options = {}) #:nodoc:
      super(table_name, options.reverse_merge(:options => 'ROW_FORMAT=DYNAMIC ENGINE=InnoDB'))
    end
  end
end

The goal of this hack is to work around a problem we ran into when using the utf8mb charset in mysql with Rails 4.

Using utf8mb4 allows us to store emoji characters in our text columns. This causes a new problem however that prevents us from creating indexes using the create_index migration. More details about that issue can be found here.

One workaround is to create your tables using the ROW_FORMAT=DYNAMIC option. Tables created this way will store their data off-page if the data is too large. More info about that can be found here.

You could resolve this by adding ROW_FORMAT=DYNAMIC to all of your migrations, but that is tedious. This code will override the default create_table migration and add that config to all of your tables by default.

In order to use this solution your Mysql server will need to be configured with the following two options:

• innodb_file_format must be set to Barracuda
• innodb_large_prefix must be set to ON

I credit serversforhackers.com for the info on innodb_large_prefix.

Added sample launch deamon for users on OS X and using Homebrew.