(mysql.info.gz) Release philosophy
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2.1.2.4 Release Philosophy--No Known Bugs in Releases
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We put a lot of time and effort into making our releases bug-free. To
our knowledge, we have not released a single MySQL version with any
_known_ "fatal" repeatable bugs. (A "fatal" bug is something that
crashes MySQL under normal usage, produces incorrect answers for normal
queries, or has a security problem.)
We have documented all open problems, bugs, and issues that are
dependent on design decisions. Bugs.
Our aim is to fix everything that is fixable without risk of making a
stable MySQL version less stable. In certain cases, this means we can
fix an issue in the development versions, but not in the stable
(production) version. Naturally, we document such issues so that users
are aware of them.
Here is a description of how our build process works:
* We monitor bugs from our customer support list, the bugs database
at `http://bugs.mysql.com/', and the MySQL external mailing lists.
* All reported bugs for live versions are entered into the bugs
database.
* When we fix a bug, we always try to make a test case for it and
include it into our test system to ensure that the bug will never
recur without being detected. (About 90% of all fixed bugs have a
test case.)
* We create test cases for all new features we add to MySQL.
* Before we start to build a new MySQL release, we ensure that all
reported repeatable bugs for the MySQL version (3.23.x, 4.0.x, etc)
are fixed. If something is impossible to fix (due to some internal
design decision in MySQL), we document this in the manual.
Bugs.
* We do a build on all platforms for which we support binaries (15+
platforms) and run our test suite and benchmark suite on all of
them.
* We will not publish a binary for a platform for which the test or
benchmark suite fails. If the problem is due to a general error
in the source, we fix it and do the build plus tests on all
systems again from scratch.
* The build and test process takes 2-3 days. If we receive a report
regarding a fatal bug during this process (for example, one that
causes a core dump), we fix the problem and restart the build
process.
* After publishing the binaries on `http://dev.mysql.com/', we send
out an announcement message to the `mysql' and `announce' mailing
lists. Mailing-list. The announcement message contains a
list of all changes to the release and any known problems with the
release. The Known Problems section in the release notes has been
needed for only a handful of releases.
* To quickly give our users access to the latest MySQL features, we
do a new MySQL release every 4-8 weeks. Source code snapshots are
built daily and are available at
`http://downloads.mysql.com/snapshots.php'.
* If, despite our best efforts, we get any bug reports after the
release is done that there was something critically wrong with the
build on a specific platform, we will fix it at once and build a
new `'a'' release for that platform. Thanks to our large user
base, problems are found quickly.
* Our track record for making good releases is quite good. In the
last 150 releases, we had to do a new build for fewer than 10
releases. In three of these cases, the bug was a faulty `glibc'
library on one of our build machines that took us a long time to
track down.
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