installing zencart on my macbook pro

I want to install zencart locally so I can test before I put it live. What is the best program to install a mysql server on my macbook pro?

Use one of the MAMP packages like the one HERE

I'm in the same boat. Wanting to put a clone of my site on my MBP and use it as staging server.

I knew OS X comes with Apache and PHP pre-installed, so I just use that (all you have to do is edit the config file at /etc/httpd/httpd.conf). Then I installed MySQL. The most obvious source to me was mysql.com and so I got it from here:
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html#macosx-dmg

Then I also d/led 2 admin tools:
Navicat from http://www.navicat.com/download.html
and MySQL's own from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/gui-tools/5.0.html

The cart seems to run fine on this setup. I sailed smoothly through the install process and now I want to restore the database that I had backed up from my live server. I had created a database dump as described here:
https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=100
https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=103
and ended up with a file MyDatabase.sql

How can I restore it?

phpmyadmin is apparently not included in Apple's PHP installation, so I tried to use one of the admin tools to restore the database from the backup file. The MySQL.com Administrator, for example, connects to the database fine and seems to recognize the file (allows me to select it), but then just gives "MySQL error while restoring backup:" The colon seems to indicate that there should be sth more, but there isn't.

I don't really want to install another xAMP package as I'm short on HD space and would prefer not to have duplicate installations on my system. What to do?

dude_s, can you just restore it from the command line?

mysql -u<userid> <database_name> < MyDatabase.sql

You would need to create the database first - i.e.

mysql -uuserid
create database <dbname>;

Good luck,
Scott