I would love to switch to MariaDB, but over the last year I've tried installing it twice on different versions of Mac OSX and failed.

I don't use Homebrew because it causes more problems than installing from source. So I followed the Generic Build instructions:

https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mariadb/generic-build-instructions/

And here were my results trying to install:

MariaDB 10.1.8
on Mac OSX 10.10.2
with Xcode 6.3.2

$ cmake --version
cmake version 3.4.0-rc3

CMake suite maintained and supported by Kitware (kitware.com/cmake).

$ cmake . -DBUILD_CONFIG=mysql_release

$ make --version
GNU Make 3.81
Copyright (C) 2006  Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.
There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

This program built for i386-apple-darwin11.3.0

$ make

...
...

Users/7stud/Downloads/mariadb-10.1.8/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/dat.cpp:191:3: error: 
      cannot use 'try' with exceptions disabled
  try {
  ^
/Users/7stud/Downloads/mariadb-10.1.8/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/dat.cpp:222:3: error: 
      cannot use 'try' with exceptions disabled
  try {
  ^
/Users/7stud/Downloads/mariadb-10.1.8/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/dat.cpp:423:3: error: 
      cannot use 'try' with exceptions disabled
  try {
  ^
/Users/7stud/Downloads/mariadb-10.1.8/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/dat.cpp:452:5: error: 
      cannot use 'try' with exceptions disabled
    try {
    ^
/Users/7stud/Downloads/mariadb-10.1.8/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/dat.cpp:465:3: error: 
      cannot use 'try' with exceptions disabled
  try {
  ^
/Users/7stud/Downloads/mariadb-10.1.8/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/dat.cpp:552:3: error: 
      cannot use 'try' with exceptions disabled
  try {
  ^
/Users/7stud/Downloads/mariadb-10.1.8/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/dat.cpp:576:5: error: 
      cannot use 'try' with exceptions disabled
    try {
    ^
/Users/7stud/Downloads/mariadb-10.1.8/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/dat.cpp:592:3: error: 
      cannot use 'try' with exceptions disabled
  try {
  ^
/Users/7stud/Downloads/mariadb-10.1.8/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/dat.cpp:617:5: error: 
      cannot use 'try' with exceptions disabled
    try {
    ^
/Users/7stud/Downloads/mariadb-10.1.8/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/dat.cpp:616:3: error: 
      cannot use 'try' with exceptions disabled
  try {
  ^
/Users/7stud/Downloads/mariadb-10.1.8/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/dat.cpp:652:5: error: 
      cannot use 'try' with exceptions disabled
    try {
    ^
/Users/7stud/Downloads/mariadb-10.1.8/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/dat.cpp:651:3: error: 
      cannot use 'try' with exceptions disabled
  try {
  ^
/Users/7stud/Downloads/mariadb-10.1.8/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/dat.cpp:703:3: error: 
      cannot use 'try' with exceptions disabled
  try {
  ^
/Users/7stud/Downloads/mariadb-10.1.8/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/dat.cpp:811:3: error: 
      cannot use 'try' with exceptions disabled
  try {
  ^
/Users/7stud/Downloads/mariadb-10.1.8/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/dat.cpp:864:3: error: 
      cannot use 'try' with exceptions disabled
  try {
  ^
/Users/7stud/Downloads/mariadb-10.1.8/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/dat.cpp:921:3: error: 
      cannot use 'try' with exceptions disabled
  try {
  ^
/Users/7stud/Downloads/mariadb-10.1.8/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/dat.cpp:969:3: error: 
      cannot use 'try' with exceptions disabled
  try {
  ^
/Users/7stud/Downloads/mariadb-10.1.8/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/dat.cpp:1007:3: error: 
      cannot use 'try' with exceptions disabled
  try {
  ^
/Users/7stud/Downloads/mariadb-10.1.8/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/dat.cpp:1101:3: error: 
      cannot use 'try' with exceptions disabled
  try {
  ^
fatal error: too many errors emitted, stopping now [-ferror-limit=]
20 errors generated.
make[2]: *** [storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/CMakeFiles/libgroonga.dir/dat.cpp.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/CMakeFiles/libgroonga.dir/all] Error 2
make: *** [all] Error 2