Installing Cassandra on Mac OS X
================================

Install Homebrew
----------------
Homebrew is a great little package manager for OS X. If you haven't already, installing it is pretty easy:

```Shell
ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/go/install)"
```

Install Python
--------------
Mac OS X has a copy of Python preinstalled, but this makes sure you get the newest version.

```Shell
brew install python
```

Install cql
-----------
To use cqlsh, the Cassandra query language shell, you need to install cql:

```Shell
pip install cql
```

Install Cassandra
-----------------
This installs Apache Cassandra:

```Shell
brew install cassandra
```

Starting/Stopping Cassandra
---------------------------
Use this command to start Cassandra:

```Shell
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.cassandra.plist
```

Use this command to stop Cassandra:

```Shell
launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.cassandra.plist
```

On Mavericks, Homebrew failed to move the plist file into LaunchAgents, which gives this error message:

```Shell
launchctl: Couldn't stat("/Users/<user>/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.cassandra.plist"): No such file or directory
```

To fix this just issue the following command. Then, try using the `launchctl load` command again:

```Shell
cp /usr/local/Cellar/cassandra/<version number>/homebrew.mxcl.cassandra.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
```

Cassandra file locations
------------------------
- Properties: `/usr/local/etc/cassandra`
- Logs: `/usr/local/var/log/cassandra`
- Data: `/usr/local/var/lib/cassandra/data`

Links
-----
- [Apache Cassandra] (http://cassandra.apache.org/)
- [Datastax Cassandra Documentation] (http://www.datastax.com/documentation/cassandra/2.0/cassandra/gettingStartedCassandraIntro.html)

Have fun with Cassandra!