1.7.1. MySQL Mailing Lists

This section introduces the MySQL mailing lists and provides guidelines as to how the lists should be used. When you subscribe to a mailing list, you receive all postings to the list as email messages. You can also send your own questions and answers to the list.

To subscribe to or unsubscribe from any of the mailing lists described in this section, visit http://lists.mysql.com/. For most of them, you can select the regular version of the list where you get individual messages, or a digest version where you get one large message per day.

Please do not send messages about subscribing or unsubscribing to any of the mailing lists, because such messages are distributed automatically to thousands of other users.

Your local site may have many subscribers to a MySQL mailing list. If so, the site may have a local mailing list, so that messages sent from lists.mysql.com to your site are propagated to the local list. In such cases, please contact your system administrator to be added to or dropped from the local MySQL list.

If you wish to have traffic for a mailing list go to a separate mailbox in your mail program, set up a filter based on the message headers. You can use either the List-ID: or Delivered-To: headers to identify list messages.

The MySQL mailing lists are as follows:

• announce

  This list is for announcements of new versions of MySQL and related programs. This is a low-volume list to which all MySQL users should subscribe.

• mysql

  This is the main list for general MySQL discussion. Please note that some topics are better discussed on the more-specialized lists. If you post to the wrong list, you may not get an answer.

• bugs

  This list is for people who want to stay informed about issues reported since the last release of MySQL or who want to be actively involved in the process of bug hunting and fixing.

• internals

  This list is for people who work on the MySQL code. This is also the forum for discussions on MySQL development and for posting patches.

• mysqldoc

  This list is for people who work on the MySQL documentation: people from MySQL AB, translators, and other community members.

• benchmarks

  This list is for anyone interested in performance issues. Discussions concentrate on database performance (not limited to MySQL), but also include broader categories such as performance of the kernel, filesystem, disk system, and so on.

• packagers

  This list is for discussions on packaging and distributing MySQL. This is the forum used by distribution maintainers to exchange ideas on packaging MySQL and on ensuring that MySQL looks and feels as similar as possible on all supported platforms and operating systems.

• java

  This list is for discussions about the MySQL server and Java. It is mostly used to discuss JDBC drivers such as MySQL Connector/J.

• win32

  This list is for all topics concerning the MySQL software on Microsoft operating systems, such as Windows 9x, Me, NT, 2000, XP, and 2003.

• myodbc

  This list is for all topics concerning connecting to the MySQL server with ODBC.

• gui-tools

  This list is for all topics concerning MySQL graphical user interface tools such as MySQL Administrator and MySQL Query Browser.

• cluster

  This list is for discussion of MySQL Cluster.

• dotnet

  This list is for discussion of the MySQL server and the .NET platform. It is mostly related to MySQL Connector/Net.

• plusplus

  This list is for all topics concerning programming with the C++ API for MySQL.

• perl

  This list is for all topics concerning Perl support for MySQL with DBD::mysql.

If you're unable to get an answer to your questions from a MySQL mailing list or forum, one option is to purchase support from MySQL AB. This puts you in direct contact with MySQL developers.

The following table shows some MySQL mailing lists in languages other than English. These lists are not operated by MySQL AB.

• <mysql-france-subscribe@yahoogroups.com>

  A French mailing list.

• <list@tinc.net>

  A Korean mailing list. To subscribe, email subscribe mysql your@email.address to this list.

• <mysql-de-request@lists.4t2.com>

  A German mailing list. To subscribe, email subscribe mysql-de your@email.address to this list. You can find information about this mailing list at http://www.4t2.com/mysql/.

• <mysql-br-request@listas.linkway.com.br>

  A Portuguese mailing list. To subscribe, email subscribe mysql-br your@email.address to this list.

• <mysql-alta@elistas.net>

  A Spanish mailing list. To subscribe, email subscribe mysql your@email.address to this list.

The forums at http://forums.mysql.com are an important community resource. Many forums are available, grouped into these general categories:

• Migration

• MySQL Usage

• MySQL Connectors

• Programming Languages

• Tools

• 3rd-Party Applications

• Storage Engines

• MySQL Technology

• SQL Standards

• Business

In addition to the various MySQL mailing lists and forums, you can find experienced community people on Internet Relay Chat (IRC). These are the best networks/channels currently known to us:

freenode (see http://www.freenode.net/ for servers)

• #mysql is primarily for MySQL questions, but other database and general SQL questions are welcome. Questions about PHP, Perl, or C in combination with MySQL are also common.

If you are looking for IRC client software to connect to an IRC network, take a look at xChat (http://www.xchat.org/). X-Chat (GPL licensed) is available for Unix as well as for Windows platforms (a free Windows build of X-Chat is available at http://www.silverex.org/download/).