Deciding Whether to Install a Source or Binary Distribution

MySQL is an open-source development, which means the source code is available to anyone who wants it for free. Operating systems such as Linux and FreeBSD are also open source, but Windows is proprietary software, meaning the source code is owned and controlled by Microsoft. Because the MySQL source code is available, you have two ways to install MySQL:

• Installing from binary, which means you use a distribution that has already been compiled by the MySQL developers (or another party)

• Installing from source, which means you compile the MySQL source code yourself and install it

Installing a binary is usually the easiest and quickest way to install MySQL, but the choice depends on a number of factors, as well as how comfortable you are with compiling software. Windows users rarely need to do this, but FreeBSD users, for example, may find themselves doing this quite often. There are a number of reasons you may want to install from source:

• The system you are installing on does not have a binary distribution. Binary distributions were available for Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, Solaris, MacOS X, HP-UX, AIX, SCO, SGI Irix, Dec OSF, and BSDi at the time of writing, although not all of these had distributions for the latest version of MySQL.

• You think you can better optimize MySQL by using a different compiler or different compilation options.

• You want something that is not available in a binary distribution, such as additional character sets, a bug fix, or a different configuration.

Tables 15.1 and 15.2 provide overviews of the directories in a default binary and source installation, respectively.

Table 15.1: Directories of a Binary Installation

Directory	Description
bin	This is where the binary executables are found, including the all-important mysqld, as well as all the utilities such as mysqladmin, mysqlcheck, and mysqldump.
data	The actual databases, as well as log files.
include	The C header files.
lib	The compiled libraries.
scripts	This contains the mysql_install_db script.
share/mysql	A directory for each language containing files with the error messages for that specific language.
sql-bench	Benchmark results and utilities.

Table 15.2: Directories of a Source Installation

Directory	Description
bin	This is where the binary executables for the client programs and utilities are found, such as mysqladmin, mysqlcheck, and mysqldump.
include	The C header files.
info	Documentation files in Info format.
lib	The compiled libraries.
libexec	The mysqld server goes here, not in the bin directory, in a default source installation.
share/mysql	A directory for each language containing files with the error messages for that specific language.
sql-bench	Benchmark results and utilities.
var	The actual databases, as well as log files.