MySQL Bugs: #3321: Files to build a client on Windows

Bug #3321	Files to build a client on Windows
Submitted:	29 Mar 2004 2:37	Modified:	31 Jul 2006 14:29
Reporter:	Sergei Kulakov (Candidate Quality Contributor)	Email Updates:
Status:	Won't fix	Impact on me:	None
Category:	MySQL Server: Packaging	Severity:	S4 (Feature request)
Version:		OS:	Windows (Windows)
Assigned to:	Kent Boortz	CPU Architecture:	Any

Description:
Not sure of the category. The problem is I can't get files for building a client on Windows without downloading the whole source archive. You see, we run 3.23.58 at our site but I only have 4.0.1 headers and libraries (complied from source with VC++) and 4.0.18 ones. 
When I switched to 4.0.18 header files some connection problems arose (some floating point operation error in libmysql.dll), so I thought I should use older headers and libs but ... after looking through the download page I found there's no way to get them it without downloading the whole huge packages (either binaries or source). Can this be fixed? 

How to repeat:
See, for ex. http://www.mysql.com/downloads/mysql-3.23.html
though any version applies. 

Suggested fix:
Separate packages with headers and client libraries only

I am assigning to our Production Engineer but I am not sure if your request
is something practical in the way you will build clients with new headers and
new client libraries without to test against the relevant server and won't
work when functions were changed or eliminated when used against older
servers.

In the above case using only these packages you and other users will run the
risk for to release clients not well tested.

Thanks for the answer. 

I guess my explanation is not complete, I'll try to fix it. 
I never meant I wanted to build clients with new headers without testing against the relevant server - on the contrary, I only want to use the relevant headers, while now I just don't have ones. 

We have this configuration: our real website runs on Free BSD with MySQL 3.23.58, and we have some Windows clients (exe) that interact with the database too. The MySQL distrib for FreeBSD does have the includes, but they won't work for Windows (just out of curiosity, I tried, and I did build the exe, but when I started it I got too many "MySQL server has gone away (2006)" erros), plus there's no way to build libmysql.dll from the distrib. So, I need the Windows package for 3.23.58, but it's quite excessive to download it too just to get the headers and the lib, that's why I want them packaged separately. 

Another case is that to develop and test the clients I also use my home computer with a local MySQL 4.x for Windows (no internet), but there I do have the headers 'cause I built the version from source. The idea is that I use the relevant headers for the version I run on each particular computer. When the program is finished I, of course, should build it with the headers for the production version.

I understood. Thank you for the explanation.

About the messages warnings/error are you getting I don't have a
good guess. I have Windows/Suse 9.0 machines and don't get these
messages, maybe you need to test your network behavior with separate
tools.

In 5.1 and up the Unix source and Windows source is
in the same package.

There are no plan to provide source packages
that only contains the source to create the client.

There are plans to provide separate client packages,
that contains libraries and headers.