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

Make sure patch, tar, gcc and make have been installed under Cygwin. You can test this by issuing which gcc for each command. If a required tool is not installed, run Cygwin's package manager, select the required tools and install them.

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

Change location to the directory you want to work from, and then use the following command to make a local copy of the MySQL 5.1 branch:

shell> bkf clone bk://mysql.bkbits.net/mysql-5.1 mysql-5.1

In the preceding example, the source tree is set up in the mysql-5.1/ 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.

You need GNU make, autoconf 2.58 (or newer), automake 1.8, libtool 1.5, and m4 to run the next set of commands. Even though many operating systems come with their own implementation of make, chances are high that the compilation fails with strange error messages. Therefore, it is highly recommended that you use GNU make (sometimes named gmake) instead.

Fortunately, a large number of operating systems ship with the GNU toolchain preinstalled or supply installable packages of these. In any case, they can also be downloaded from the following locations:

To configure MySQL 5.1, you also need GNU bison. You should use the latest version of bison where possible. Version 1.75 and version 2.1 are known to work. There have been reported problems with bison 1.875. If you experience problems, upgrade to a later, rather than earlier, version. Versions of bison older than 1.75 may report this error:

sql_yacc.yy:#####: fatal error: maximum table size (32767) exceeded

Note: The maximum table size is not actually exceeded; the error is caused by bugs in older versions of bison.

The following example shows the typical commands required to configure a source tree. The first cd command changes location into the top-level directory of the tree; replace mysql-5.1 with the appropriate directory name. The second line (for storage/innobase) is needed only before MySQL 5.1.12.

shell> cd mysql-5.1
shell> (cd storage/innobase; autoreconf --force --install)
shell> autoreconf --force --install
shell> ./configure  # Add your favorite options here
shell> make

Or you can use BUILD/autorun.sh as a shortcut for the following sequence of commands:

shell> aclocal; autoheader
shell> libtoolize --automake --force
shell> automake --force --add-missing; autoconf
shell> (cd storage/innobase; aclocal; autoheader; autoconf; automake)

The command line that changes directory into the storage/innobase directory is used to configure the InnoDB storage engine. You can omit this lines if you do not require InnoDB support.

Note: Beginning with MySQL 5.1, code specific to storage engines has been moved under a storage directory. For example, InnoDB code is now found in storage/innobase and NDBCluster code is in storage/ndb.

If you get some strange errors during this stage, verify that you really have libtool installed.

A collection of our standard configuration scripts is located in the BUILD/ subdirectory. 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.

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 have another installation of MySQL, we recommend that you run ./configure with different values for the --prefix, --with-tcp-port, and --unix-socket-path options than 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 26.1.2, “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 1.8, “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 execute aclocal and get a command not found error or a similar problem, do not report it. Instead, make sure that all the necessary tools are installed and that your PATH variable is set correctly so that your shell can find them.

After initially copying the repository with bkf to obtain the source tree, you should use pull option to periodically update your local copy. To do this any time after you have set up the repository, use this command:

shell> bkf pull

You can examine the changeset comments for the tree by using the changes option to bkf:

shell> bkf changes

To get a list of the changes that would be applied with the next bkf pull:

shell> bkf changes -R

To obtain a patch file for a specific changeset (CSETID), use:

shell> bkf changes -vvrCSETID

If you see diffs or code that you have a question about, do not hesitate to send email to the MySQL internals mailing list. See Section 1.7.1, “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.