More MySQL Worklogs and MySQL Developer Guide published

As we ramp up to the MySQL Community Edition release in April, and as part of your our updated community engagement approach (see: A New Era of MySQL Community Engagement), we are announcing more MySQL worklogs, a MySQL Developer Guide and a reminder to please provide feedback on the recently published Early Access Release builds

Development of open source software works best when people can see what is being worked on, understand the motivation behind it, and engage early with feedback—often before implementation and broader testing begins. With that in mind, we’re increasing transparency by publishing more MySQL Worklogs as a follow up to those released last week, and we will continue to do so more frequently and earlier in the development lifecycle.


You can find the Worklogs here: https://dev.mysql.com/worklog

What are MySQL Worklogs?

MySQL Worklogs are engineering records used to track development work—features, improvements, refactoring, and other changes. They help capture the motivation and intent behind an initiative and provide a place to document the work as it evolves.

For community members, worklogs are a useful way to:

  • follow what’s being worked on across MySQL,
  • understand the “why” behind changes,
  • and identify areas where early feedback and testing can help.

What’s changing: publication has resumed, with earlier and more frequent updates

The change is not that individual worklogs are “expanded”—it’s how and when we publish and share them.

Going forward, we will:

  • Publish worklogs again (resuming regular public updates),
  • Publish more frequently, pushing worklogs out as they are ready,
  • Publish earlier in the work cycle (when appropriate), so the community has earlier visibility into work in progress.

The goal is straightforward: increase transparency and make it easier for the community to follow development and engage sooner.

Why earlier publication helps

Publishing earlier and more regularly creates more opportunities for constructive collaboration:

  • Earlier feedback: input on design, usability, and operational considerations can arrive while it can still influence implementation.
  • Earlier testing: community members can start evaluating new behavior, performance characteristics, and compatibility impacts sooner.
  • Better planning: users and ecosystem maintainers can track direction and prepare for change with fewer surprises.

A few important notes

Worklogs reflect current engineering intent, not a delivery guarantee. Priorities and scope can change as work progresses. Also, while we are publishing earlier, there will still be cases where we delay or limit details for responsible reasons (for example, security-sensitive topics).

Explore the Worklogs

If you would like to follow along, start here: https://dev.mysql.com/worklog

MySQL Developer Guide

As a new addition, there is now a Developer Guide on MySQL.com. MySQL’s strength comes from its community. This Developer Guide describes how we will:

  • Reinvigorate MySQL Community engagement based on community feedback
  • Deliver more innovation into MySQL Community Edition
  • Expand and grow the ecosystem
  • Increase transparency and participation by making it easier to contribute while preserving MySQL’s quality, stability, and security

Your feedback is essential to shaping what comes next. One important aspect of the MySQL Developer Guide is providing guidance for how to give feedback on the Early Access Release builds.

Reminder: Early Access Release Builds

As we announced last week, this is a reminder that the first early access release build for 9.7 is out.  We will be providing a second Early Access Release with Release Notes and a Docker image in the coming weeks.

The Early Access Release build includes the following feature highlights (more details on each of these features is described in our blog post from last week.

  • Flow-control monitoring for MySQL InnoDB Cluster (Group Replication)
  • Multi-threaded applier: extended applier statistics
  • Automatic Eviction & Rejoin
  • Up-to-date Aware Primary Election
  • Telemetry (OpenTelemetry / OTLP)
  • Profile-Guided Optimization (PGO)
  • MySQL JSON Duality Views
  • Hypergraph Optimizer

Where to get EA builds: We have published a dedicated download page.

How the community can engage and what feedback is most valuable

In closing, the most valuable feedback you can give is your experience with EA Release builds: 

  • Test EA Release builds (link coming soon) and share regressions, upgrade issues, performance changes, and replication/HA edge cases 
  • File actionable bug reports with clear reproduction steps and environment details 
  • Review published Worklogs and comment on design tradeoffs or missing cases
  • Register to attend our upcoming Public MySQL Community Discussion on Monday, March 23.

As always, thank you for using MySQL!

Links:

Engagement & Roadmap

Development & Feedback

Technical Details