Hi all, I'm sorry if I'm posting in a wrong forum! I hope it's a right place!

I need some help to choose a version of MySQL for my contribution in some open source project. The application need:

o php 5.0 or later
o MySQL 4.1 or later
o Apache web server 1.3 or later
o latest php5-gd libs

And I just installed Fedora 7 on my system since I need to work on open source platform.(I even appreciate if you let me know that Fedora 7 is a good choice! I'm kinda new in Linux environment..)

My confusion is about choosing a proper version of MySQL in this sitethere is a long list of different platforms. The only thing I know is that Fedora is Red Hat based system, right!)
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html#downloads

Thanks in advance for any kind of info...
Cheers!

What are the versions used by the other developers on the project? If you are a new developer on a project, things like minimum library versions seem like decisions may be the lead architects of the project.

I'm using SuSE 10.3. The program versions seem a little low than I would expect FC6 or FC7 to have. You can search for them on the rpm.pbone.net web site. Filter the results to just find "Fedora Core 7" packages.

You might want to stick to working with the version of php5-gd that comes with Fedora Core 7. If a package is built for Fedora Core 7, but a library version differs, that can cause problems for users. They may have to choose between not installing your package or uninstalling a number of packages that came with FC7. Trying to track down a library version that is significantly more recent than the one used by the latest distro, for a user can be a nightmare. This seems to happen all to often for media type projects. I'll often have to install a late version or cheat with a library link (like I had to do to get kdar working in SuSE 10.3). If you will be using Fedora Core 7, why not install the mysql server and client packaged with Fedora Core 7.

Of course if there have been security updates, the updated version is OK. If you don't need new features of a newer library or program version, the requirements to build a package could be conservative, as your list seems to be. That would let a user of, lets say, FC6 build the package without difficulty.

Yes. Fedora is the Community version of what used to be their RH packaged box set. They sell an enterprise product with support to companies. FC is more of a user distribution. It is more dynamic and will have more versions come out between Red Hat Enterprise versions. Imagine that you install RHEL in a corporation with 30 Servers and 5,000 desktops. You wouldn't want to be upgrading every 4 months.

Come to think of it, I just thought of another criteria on your decision of library and program versions. Is this Open Source project aimed at regular home FC users or Corporate RHEL employees. A CRM suite would be geared for RHEL and so you would probably build it using those versions. what is the most common version of RHEL? Does it's packages correspond to a particular FC distro version. For example, for SuSE's enterprise 10 version, the packages are equivalent to openSUSE 10.1.

Just my 2 cents worth.
Good Luck!

Thanks "jschiwal" for helping..
The project is a disaster management system (Sahana) and it intended to work on most popular OS and browsers.

Yes, that's what is needed for the project, to be installed without difficulties.

According to the points I got from your post, I really need to get back to the project wiki and read more! or maybe I should talk to dev. team of the project! Now I have some idea about what to ask!

Regards!

My understanding is that you would probably contribute by submitting patches on the mailing list. For many projects you need to have a history of useful contributions before becoming an active member of the development community for an OS project. Not doing this could lead to chaos. Some projects are more open to user contributions than others. Corresponding with a member of the dev team member would probably be a good idea.

Thank you "jschiwal", I got some contacts in dev's team. Hopefully I can do something...

Regards,

To answer you original question as to what version of Mysql you should install, i suggest you try lampp. Its a fully fledged webserver, php and Mysql suite and is really easy to work with especially now that you are learning. you can get it here FC 7 is a great choice cuz it has great support from it repositories. I personally work with FC7 as a webserver and its not failed me so far.