To obtain a copy of the MySQL source code, you must create a new Bazaar branch. If you do not already have a Bazaar repository directory set up, you need to initialize a new directory:

shell> mkdir mysql-server
shell> bzr init-repo --trees mysql-server

Once you have an initialized directory, you can branch from the public MySQL server repositories to create a local source tree. To create a branch of a specific version:

shell> cd mysql-server
shell> bzr branch lp:mysql-server/5.1 mysql-5.1

The initial download will take some time to complete, depending on the speed of your connection. Please be patient. Once you have downloaded the first tree, additional trees should take significantly less time to download.

When building from the Bazaar branch, you may want to create a copy of your active branch so that you can make configuration and other changes without affecting the original branch contents. You can achieve this by branching from the original branch:

shell> bzr branch mysql-5.1 mysql-5.1-build

To obtain changes made after you have set up the branch initially, update it using the pull option periodically. Use this command in the top-level directory of the local copy:

shell> bzr pull

You can examine the changeset comments for the tree by using the log option to bzr:

shell> bzr log

You can also browse changesets, comments, and source code online. To browse this information for MySQL 5.1, go to the Launchpad MySQL Server page.

If you see diffs (changes) or code that you have a question about, do not hesitate to send email to the MySQL internals mailing list. See Section 1.6.1, “MySQL Mailing Lists”. Also, if you think you have a better idea on how to do something, send an email message to the list with a patch.

Change location to the top-level directory of the source tree; replace mysql-5.1 with the appropriate directory name.

shell> cd mysql-5.1

Prepare the source tree for configuration.

Prior to MySQL 5.1.12, you must separately configure the InnoDB storage engine. Run the following command from the main source directory:

shell> (cd storage/innobase; autoreconf --force --install)

You can omit the previous command for MySQL 5.1.12 and later, or if you do not require InnoDB support.

Prepare the remainder of the source tree:

shell> autoreconf --force --install

As an alternative to the preceding autoreconf command, you can use BUILD/autorun.sh, which acts as a shortcut for the following sequence of commands:

shell> aclocal; autoheader
shell> libtoolize --automake --force
shell> automake --force --add-missing; autoconf

If you get some strange errors during this stage, verify that you have the correct version of libtool installed.

Configure the source tree and compile MySQL:

shell> ./configure  # Add your favorite options here
shell> make

For a description of some configure options, see Section 2.3.2, “Typical configure Options”.

A collection of our standard configuration scripts is located in the BUILD/ subdirectory. For example, you may find it more convenient to use the BUILD/compile-pentium-debug script than the preceding set of shell commands. To compile on a different architecture, modify the script by removing flags that are Pentium-specific, or use another script that may be more appropriate. These scripts are provided on an “as-is” basis. They are not officially maintained and their contents may change from release to release.

When the build is done, run make install. Be careful with this on a production machine; the command may overwrite your live release installation. If you already have MySQL installed and do not want to overwrite it, run ./configure with values for the --prefix, --with-tcp-port, and --with-unix-socket-path options different from those used for your production server.

Play hard with your new installation and try to make the new features crash. Start by running make test. See Section 22.1.2, “MySQL Test Suite”.

If you have gotten to the make stage, but the distribution does not compile, please enter the problem into our bugs database using the instructions given in Section 1.7, “How to Report Bugs or Problems”. If you have installed the latest versions of the required GNU tools, and they crash trying to process our configuration files, please report that also. However, if you get a command not found error or a similar problem for aclocal, configure, or other required tools, do not report it. Instead, make sure that all the required tools are installed and that your PATH variable is set correctly so that your shell can find them.