Generic Build Instructions

The instructions on this page will help you compile MariaDB from source. Links to more complete instructions for specific platforms can be found on the source page.

First, get a copy of the MariaDB source.

Next, prepare your system to be able to compile the source.

If you don't want to run MariaDB as yourself, then you should create a mysql user. The example below uses this user.

Using cmake

MariaDB 5.5 and above is compiled using cmake.

It is recommended to create a build directory beside your source directory

mkdir build-mariadb
cd build-mariadb

NOTE If you have built MariaDB in the past and have recently updated the repository, you should perform a complete cleanup of old artifacts (such as cmake configured files). In the base repository run:

git clean -xffd && git submodule foreach --recursive git clean -xffd

You can configure your build simply by running cmake without any special options, like

cmake ../server

where server is where you installed MariaDB. If you are building in the source directory, just omit ../server.

If you want it to be configured exactly as a normal MariaDB server release is built, use

cmake ../server -DBUILD_CONFIG=mysql_release

This will configure the build to generate binary tarballs similar to release tarballs from downloads.mariadb.org. Unfortunately this doesn't work on old platforms, like OpenSuse Leap 15.0, because MariaDB binary tarballs are built to minimize external dependencies, and that needs static libraries that might not be provided by the platform by default, and would need to be installed manually.

To do a build suitable for debugging use:

cmake ../server -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug

By default, MariaDB is compiled with the -Werror flag, which causes compiling to abort if there is a compiler warning. You can disable that by configuring with -DMYSQL_MAINTAINER_MODE=OFF.

cmake ../server -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DMYSQL_MAINTAINER_MODE=OFF.

All cmake configuration options for MariaDB can be displayed with:

cmake ../server -LH

To build and install MariaDB after running cmake use

cmake --build .
sudo cmake --install .

If the commands above fail, you can enable more compilation information by doing:

cmake --build . --verbose

If you want to generate a binary tarball, run

cpack

Using BUILD Scripts

There are also BUILD scripts for the most common systems for those that doesn't want to dig into cmake options. These are optimized for in source builds.

The scripts are of type 'compile-#cpu#-how_to_build'. Some common scripts-are

Some common suffixes used for the scripts:

All BUILD scripts support the following options:

A typical compilation used by a developer would be:

shell> ./BUILD/compile-pentium64-debug

This configures the source for debugging and runs make. The server binary will be sql/mariadbd or sql/mysqld.

Starting MariaDB for the First Time

After installing MariaDB (using sudo make install), but prior to starting MariaDB for the first time, one should:

1. Ensure the directory where you want MariaDB to store it's data is owned by the mariadb user (if the user doesn't exist, you'll need to create it)
2. Create a MariaDB configuration config file (/.my.cnf or /etc/my.cnf) with the configuration options you desire. A suggested minimum configuration file, to specify where you want your data to be stored, would be:

[mariadbd]
datadir=/usr/local/mariadb/data/

1. run the mariadb-install-db script to generate the needed system tables

Here is an example:

# The following assumes that the 'mariadb' user exists and that we installed MariaDB
# in /usr/local/mariadb
chown -R mariadb /usr/local/mariadb/
cd /usr/local/mariadb/
./scripts/mariadb-install-db --user=mariadb
/usr/local/mariadb/bin/mariadb-safe --user=mariadb &

If needed, you can also use the --datadir=/usr/local/mariadb/data/ options with mariadbd-install-db and mariadbd-safe

Testing MariaDB

If you want to test your compiled MariaDB, you can do either of:

Run unit tests:

cmake --build . --target test

Or run mtr tests:

mysql-test/mysql-test-run --force

Each of the above are run from the build directory. There is no need to 'make install/cmake --install .' MariaDB prior to running them.

Increasing Version Number or Tagging a Version

If you have made code changes and want to increase the version number or tag our version with a specific tag you can do this by editing the VERSION file. Tags are shown when running the 'mariadbd --version' command.

Non-ascii Symbols

MariaDB builds with readline; using an alternative such as Editline may result in problems with non-ascii symbols.

Post-install Tasks

• Installing system tables (mariadb-install-db)
• Starting and Stopping MariaDB Automatically