Error installing mysql2: Failed to build gem native extension

I am having some problems when trying to install mysql2 gem for Rails. When I try to install it by running bundle install or gem install mysql2 it gives me the following error:


Error installing mysql2: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

How can I fix this and successfully install mysql2?

On Ubuntu/Debian and other distributions using aptitude:

sudo apt-get install libmysql-ruby libmysqlclient-dev

Package libmysql-ruby has been phased out and replaced by ruby-mysql. This is where I found the solution.

If the above command doesn't work because libmysql-ruby cannot be found, the following should be sufficient:

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev

On Red Hat/CentOS and other distributions using yum:

sudo yum install mysql-devel

On Mac OS X with Homebrew:

brew install mysql

Stack Overflow Q#3608287, score: 988