Entry

What do the MySQL version levels mean?

What's the difference between alpha, beta, gamma and stable?

When should I upgrade to the latest alpha / beta version?

Jan 27th, 2004 16:08
Tony Hughes, Nathan Wallace, Sasha Pachev

In our definition, alpha -> beta

However, our definitions of alpha, beta, gamma and stable might be
different from what you are used to:

alpha  - passes our standard test suite, but users still report bugs
beta   - no serious bug reports for a month
gamma  - beta that has been around for a while with only minor bug
         reports
stable - no bug reports at all

I personally trust the latest 3.23 alpha as much as I do the latest 
3.22
gamma.  The only time you will experience problems with the alpha
version is if you come up with a query that make mysqld execute some 
not
very well tested code. If you make sure to test your application on 
3.23
thoroughly under production load, and it does not crash (which means it
never touches the possibly broken "alpha" code), you go ahead and move
the setup into production without much worry.

--Depending on the status of your server, ie production machine = 
latest stable version, staging server = alpha version

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