mysql5, mysql5-devel

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jan 4, 2009, at 14:43, Akira Kitada wrote:

> I once heard that -devel suffix denotes the port is development  
> release.

Correct. This is a convention that is employed by dozens of ports so  
far. It's not documented yet in the guide, but it should be; see:

http://trac.macports.org/ticket/14540


> Now that MySQL 5.1 is GA release, maybe can we promote strip the - 
> devel?

You're right that 5.1 is now the generally-available version of  
MySQL, so it would follow that the mysql5 port should be updated to  
that version. The mysql5-devel port can stay around and be updated to  
MySQL 5.2 or 6.0 or whatever is next in the pipeline. I was holding  
off on updating the mysql5 port for a few reasons. First, there are a  
few things I want to change about the way the MySQL ports work, and I  
figured the major version bump would be a good time to introduce  
those, such as:

http://trac.macports.org/ticket/12313

Second, the original developer of MySQL states that the 5.1 GA  
release (5.1.30) has many problems:

http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2008/11/oops-we-did-it-again-mysql-51- 
released.html

He says the new 5.1 features are buggy, but that the existing 5.0  
features are improved, so that still sounds like a reason for me to  
update the port. Still, I was hoping a bugfix version might appear  
soon that I could update the port to instead.


> (in that case, we would lose 5.0... I'm not a big fan of -devel  
> naming)

I'm sorry you're not a fan of the naming convention, but it has been  
in place for some time so I see no need to change it.