I don't know if the (15|16...) is supposed to work on OSX. I have "libmysqlclient.18.dylib" in my lib directory and get "could not load: libmysqlclient.(15|16|17[18).dylib" on execution. After removing the pattern I can run my little example program and it works as "libmysqlclient.dylib" is a softlink to the current version anyway.