We will install MySQL using Homebrew, which will also install some header files needed for MySQL bindings in different programming languages (MySQL-Python for one).
$ brew install mysql
To have launchd start MySQL now and restart at login:
$ brew services start mysql
Or, if you don't want/need a background service you can just use the mysql.server tool:
$ mysql.server start
To stop it when you are done, run:
$ mysql.server stop
You can see the different commands available for mysql.server with:
$ mysql.server --help
To connect with the command-line client, run:
$ mysql -uroot
(Use exit to quit the MySQL shell)
Note: By default, the MySQL user root has no password. It doesn't really matter for a local development database. If you wish to change it though, you can use $ mysqladmin -u root password 'new-password'.
It is always nice to have a GUI tool for managing databases. For Mac, you can use Sequel Pro to manage local and remote MySQL databases. It is a free tool, you can choose to donate to support the development.
You may install Sequel Pro using homebrew:
$ brew cask install sequel-pro