Missing MySQL help tables?

MySQL server running on my macbook doesn’t have server-side help! Arrrgh!

mysql> help insert
Nothing found
Please try to run 'help contents' for a list of all accessible topics

And it’s because I’ve installed mysql 5.0 server on my macbook via macports. Yes, i’m aware that you can also get the DMG directly from mysql.com but the thing is I get Apache and PHP via macports too. So i’d rather have the entire stack managed from within a package manager than to mix things up. The default mac php installation doesn’t have the GD extension built-in btw. I need it!

Anyways. Macports doesn’t automagically installed the mysql help tables for you. All along I thought that the server-side help was something that had to be including as a flag when compiling the MySQL Server. So I regarded it a hopeless cause since macports offers very few variants (variants are kind of like compile flags).

Turns out its just all you need to do is download the help tables . And then:

shell> mysql -u root mysql < fill_help_tables.sql
mysql> help insert
Name: ‘INSERT’
Description:
Syntax:
INSERT [LOW_PRIORITY | DELAYED | HIGH_PRIORITY] [IGNORE]
    [INTO] tbl_name [(col_name,…)]
    {VALUES | VALUE} ({expr | DEFAULT},…),(…),…
    [ ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE
      col_name=expr
        [, col_name=expr] … ]

Voila!