Additional languages
Falcon Storage Engine Guide :: 2 Getting and Building Falcon
« 1.1 Falcon Features
3 Using Falcon »
Section Navigation      [Toggle]

Chapter 2. Getting and Building Falcon

Falcon has been made available as a special MySQL tree called mysql-5.2-falcon. In order to try out Falcon you must download the source code and build the special version of the MySQL tree.

To build the Falcon release you will need:

  • GNU make

  • GNU autoconf 2.58 (or newer)

  • GNU automake 1.8 (or newer)

  • GNU libtool 1.5

You can obtain the sources for Falcon from http://mysql.bkbits.com. In order to download the sources, you must use a BitKeeper client. You may use either the free client or the commercial client to download the sources.

To obtain a source tree, first download and install the BitKeeper free client if you do not have it. The client can be obtained from http://www.bitmover.com/bk-client2.0.shar. Your system will need to have gcc, make, patch and tar installed. Note that old 1.1 versions of the BitKeeper free client will not work!

To install the BitKeeper client on Unix, use these commands: 

shell> /bin/sh bk-client2.0.shar
shell> cd bk-client2.0
shell> make

If you get a cc: command not found error, invoke this command when running make: 

shell> make CC=gcc

This will create the tool bkf, the free BitKeeper client. For more information on the free BitKeeper client use: 

shell> bkf --help

To install the BitKeeper client on Windows, use these instructions:

  1. Download and install Cygwin from http://cygwin.com.

  2. Make sure gcc and make have been installed under Cygwin. You can test this by issuing which gcc and which make commands. If either one is not installed, run Cygwin's package manager, select gcc, make, or both, and install them.

  3. For the installation of the BitKeeper free client, use the same installations as given for Unix-like systems above.

Note

For more information using the public BitKeeper sources for MySQL, and the free BitKeeper client, see Installing from the Development Source Tree.

After you have installed the BitKeeper client, you can access the MySQL development source tree:

  1. Change location to the directory you want to work from, and then use the following command to make a local copy of the mysql-5.2-falcon tree: 

    shell> bkf clone bk://mysql.bkbits.net/mysql-5.2-falcon mysql-5.2-falcon

    In the preceding example, the source tree is set up in the mysql-5.2-falcon/ subdirectory of your current directory.

    The initial download of the source tree may take a while, depending on the speed of your connection. Please be patient.

Once you have downloaded the Falcon tree:

  1. Change into the directory containing the Falcon tree: 

    shell> cd mysql-5.2-falcon

  2. Run the appropropriate build script to start the build process. For Pentium CPUs, use compile-pentium-debug-falcon, for AMD 64 CPUs, use compile-amd64-debug-falcon. The build scipts are located in the BUILD, but they should be executed from the root directory of the tree: 

    shell> ./BUILD/compile-pentium-debug-falcon

  3. The build script will create the necessary stubs for the configure process, run configure, and then execute the make to start the compilation process.

  4. Rather than installing directly from this build, you may want to create a binary package that can be distributed and relocated to the right location. To create such a distribution, use the make_binary_distribution script: 

    shell> ./scripts/make_binary_distribution

    The above command will create an archive with all the files you need configured to behave as if they were in a directoy named according to the version and tag for this release. For example, on a Linux Pentium machine, the Falcon release will create an archive with the name mysql-5.2.0-falcon-alpha-linux-i686.tar, which contains the directory mysql-5.2.0-falcon-alpha-linux-i686.

    To install the files to a new location, extract them specifying the new base directory: 

    shell> tar zxf mysql-5.2.0-falcon-alpha-linux-i686 -C /usr/local

    You can either use directory or link to an alternative location. For example, you may want to create a link to /usr/local/mysql-falcon: 

    shell> cd /usr/local
shell> ln -s mysql-5.2.0-falcon-alpha-linux-i686 mysql-falcon

  5. You must configure the new installation, including creating the base databases. Running configure in this directory will perform this function for you, and start an instance of mysqld: 

    shell> cd mysql-falcon
shell> ./configure

    If mysqld fails to start, ensure that the files in your chosen directory are owned by the mysql user: 

    shell> chown -R mysql:mysql *

  6. Confirm that mysqld is running by obtaining the version from the server: 

    shell> ./bin/mysqladmin version
./bin/mysqladmin  Ver 8.42 Distrib 5.2.0-falcon-alpha, for pc-linux-gnu on i686
Copyright (C) 2000 MySQL AB & MySQL Finland AB & TCX DataKonsult AB
This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software,
and you are welcome to modify and redistribute it under the GPL license

Server version          5.2.0-falcon-alpha-debug
Protocol version        10
Connection              Localhost via UNIX socket
UNIX socket             /tmp/mysql.sock
Uptime:                 3 min 24 sec

Threads: 1  Questions: 1  Slow queries: 0  Opens: 14  Flush tables: 1 »
            Open tables: 7  Queries per second avg:

    You may need to update your LD_LIBRARY_PATH with the MySQL libraries: 

    shell> export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/mysql-falcon/lib

Once Falcon has been installed, you can try creating tables using the Falcon engine. For example, to create a simple table with Falcon: 

shell> ./bin/mysql
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 2
Server version: 5.2.0-falcon-alpha-debug Source distribution

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql> use test
Database changed
mysql> CREATE TABLE falcon_basic (id int, fname varchar(20)) ENGINE=Falcon;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (1.07 sec)

For more information on Falcon features and functionality, see Chapter 3, Using Falcon. You may want to exchange information on your experiences with other users on the Falcon Forum. If you think you have found a bug, use MySQL Bugs.