From: Sebastien FLAESCH
Date: February 18 2013 11:59am
Subject: Re: MySQL Client (libmysqlclient) compatibility policy
List-Archive: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql/229001
Message-Id: <512217AA.5050608@4js.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

On 02/18/2013 12:14 PM, Noel Butler wrote:
> On Mon, 2013-02-18 at 10:57 +0100, Sebastien FLAESCH wrote:
>
>> I have several versions of MySQL installed on my Linux, and it appears
>> that the libmysqlclient versions have changed in the 5.x version line:
>>
>> /opt3/dbs/mys/4.1.24/lib/libmysqlclient.so.14
>> /opt3/dbs/mys/5.0.90/lib/libmysqlclient.so.15
>> /opt3/dbs/mys/5.1.35/lib/libmysqlclient.so.16
>> /opt3/dbs/mys/5.1.51/lib/libmysqlclient.so.16
>> /opt3/dbs/mys/5.4.0/lib/libmysqlclient.so.16
>> /opt3/dbs/mys/5.5.1/lib/libmysqlclient.so.16
>> /opt3/dbs/mys/5.5.19/lib/libmysqlclient.so.18
>> /opt3/dbs/mys/5.6.10/lib/libmysqlclient.so.18
>>
>
> Asking for trouble, rebuild what depends on latest, and get rid of all
> that ancient crud. Its not like it changes with every release, so its
> only a very minor inconvenience, and if you have separate servers for
> each functions like SP's do, then it's an even smaller inconvenience per
> server.
>

Sorry, I should have mentioned that we are a development tool vendor.

We sell a compiler and runtime system that allows to write applications
in a 4gl language, for different sort of databases, and we deliver what
we call "database drivers" for each of the supported dbs types.

We support Oracle, SQL Server, DB2 UDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Sybase ASE,
SQLite and Informix IDS ...

For each of these dbs types, we have to support the latest versions of
the client libraries. This has a cost in terms of porting and QA tests.

Regarding MySQL, we support today the following versions, and we have
a db driver for each of them:

4.1.x
5.0.x
5.1.x
5.4.x
5.5.x
5.6.x (soon)

We want to reduce as much as possible the number of drivers we deliver.

Beside new SQL features that could be introduced between 5.x versions,
we need to know the compatibility policy regarding the MySQL client lib.

Another option could be to support only 5.6, and ask customers to
install the corresponding client lib, by keeping the server in a 5.x
version.

Thanks
Seb