I went to go upgrade my copy of XAMPP today from 0.3 to 1.7.2. Following the instructions on the XAMPP site I removed the old XAMPP from the Applications folder and put in the new one. The instruction was simple enough. The instruction was singular; not even plural. I went to boot Apache and it started fine. MySQL did not do as hot. I got this dialogue when I tried to boot up MySQL. I went through the next necessary diagnostic steps: curse, restart, retry, and curse.
Once the brain started functioning on a higher level than caveman I opened up Activity Monitor to see other processes that were running that might be using MySQL. Using the filter I brought up a mysqld process and a double click revealed the culprit. Version Cue also uses mysqld to manage versions. Version Cue has a start up item so it is always running in the background if you set it up that way. I use Version Cue to version my graphical assets so I leave it on. After turning Version Cue off, XAMPP 1.7.2 started MySQL successfully. Turning Version Cue on broke it again. For some reason XAMPP 0.3 can coexist at the same time, but not XAMPP 1.7.2. I’m not going to speculate as to why, but if you run into this error consider seeing if Version Cue or another mysqld process is running. I sent an email off to the Apache friends (which sounds like an Native American version of the Justice League) to make them aware of this potential bug.
Seeing that I already made some modifications to httpd.conf and httpd-vhosts.conf for virtual hosts and to map directories outside of the htdocs folder to use XAMPP it’s better that I stay back at 0.3 for now anyway. Fortunately, taking the shot at the upgrade didn’t hurt anything and it was really simple to revert as it is just moving folders to and fro.