MySQL Reference Manual - 4.0.20

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2.1.2.2 Choosing a Distribution Format

After choosing which version of MySQL to install, you should decide whether to use a binary distribution or a source distribution. In most cases, you should probably use a binary distribution, if one exists for your platform. Binary distributions are available in native format for many platforms, such as RPM files for Linux or DMG package installers for Mac OS X. Distributions also are available 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 two different binary versions: one compiled with the non-transactional storage engines (a small, fast binary), and one configured with the most important extended options like transaction-safe tables. Both versions are compiled from the same source distribution. All native MySQL clients can connect to servers from either MySQL version.
The extended MySQL binary distribution is marked with the -max suffix and is configured with the same options as mysqld-max. See section mysqld-max.
If you want to use the MySQL-Max RPM, you must first install the standard MySQL-server RPM.

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

You want to install MySQL at some explicit location. The standard binary distributions are "ready to run" at any place, but you may want to have even more flexibility to place MySQL components where you want.
You want to configure mysqld with some extra features that are not included in the standard binary distributions. Here is a list of the most common extra options that you may want to use:
- --with-innodb (default for MySQL 4.0 and onwards)
- --with-berkeley-db (not available on all platforms)
- --with-raid
- --with-libwrap
- --with-named-z-libs (this is done for some of the binaries)
- --with-debug[=full]
You want to configure mysqld without some features that are included in the standard binary distributions. For example, distributions normally are compiled with support for all character sets. If you want a smaller MySQL server, you can recompile it with support for only the character sets you need.
You have a special compiler (such as pgcc) or want to use compiler options that are better optimized for your processor. Binary distributions are compiled with options that should work on a variety of processors from the same processor family.
You want to use the latest sources from one of the BitKeeper repositories to have access to all current bugfixes. For example, if you have found a bug and reported it to the MySQL development team, the bugfix will be committed to the source repository and you can access it there. The bugfix will not appear in a release until a release actually is issued.
You want to read (or modify) the C and C++ code that makes up MySQL. For this purpose, you should get a source distribution, because the source code is always the ultimate manual.
Source distributions contain more tests and examples than binary distributions.