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Choosing a Distribution Format

After choosing which version of MySQL to install, you should decide whetherto use a binary

distribution or a source distribution. In most cases, you should probably use a binary distribution, if one

exists foryour platform. Binary distributions are available in native format for many platforms, such as

RPM packages for Linux, DMG packages for Mac OS X, and PKG packages for Solaris. Distributions

are also available in morę generic formats such as Zip archives or compressed tar files.

Reasons to choose a binary distribution include the following:

•    Binary distributions generally are easier to install than source distributions.

•    To satisfy different user requirements, we provide several servers in binary distributions. mysqld

is an optimized server that is a smaller, faster binary. mysąld-debug is

compiled with debugging

support.

Each of these servers is compiled from the same source distribution, though with different

configuration options. Ali native MySQL clients can connect to servers from either MySQL version.

Under some circumstances, you may be better off installing MySQL from a source distribution:

•    You want to install MySOL at some explicrt iocation. The standard binary distributions are ready

to run at any installation Iocation, but you might require even morę flexibility to place MySQL components where you want.

•    You want to configure mysqld to ensure that features are available that might not be included in the

standard binary distributions. Here is a list of the most common extra options that you may want to use to ensure feature availability: