Currently there are several MySQL versions released by SUN. Latest version marked as stable is MySQL 5.1. This version is in build service for some time already and you may noticed that it is on it’s way to Factory (no yet there, but working on it). Other newer releases are 5.4 and 6.0. 5.4 is currently in beta stage and date of stable release should be announced later this year. 6.0 is in alpha stage and it might take quite some time till it will be released as stable.
So what? Well, recently I mentioned splitting server: database repository and creating UNSTABLE branch. One reason to do this was to provide a place where experimental version of MySQL can live. And so I packaged 5.4 and it is now available in server: database: UNSTABLE repository. Why you might be interested in testing MySQL 5.4? According to the release notes, main difference between 5.1 and 5.4 are performance and scalability improvements.
Why you should be afraid of testing it? Well, officially it’s beta. So even SUN doesn’t recommend it for production servers. And I didn’t have time to test it myself yet more deeply. I packaged it, fix few minor things so it will get built and tested if it runs. You may found something missing or somewhere else that you would expect. If you encounter some error, let me know and I’ll take a closer look at it 😉 Once I’ll settle all urgent things, I’ll take a deeper look at this package.