The source distribution is done with configure and Automake. It will make porting much easier. The readline library is included in the distribution.
Separate client compilation: the client code should be very easy to compile on systems which don't have threads.
The old Perl interface code is automatically compiled and installed. Automatic compiling of DBD will follow when the new DBD code is ported.
Dynamic language support: mysqld can now be started with Swedish or English (default) error messages.
New functions: INSERT(), RTRIM(), LTRIM() and FORMAT().
mysqldump now works correctly for all field types (even AUTO_INCREMENT). The format for SHOW FIELDS FROM tbl_name is changed so the Type column contains information suitable for CREATE TABLE. In previous releases, some CREATE TABLE information had to be patched when re-creating tables.
Some parser bugs from 3.19.5 (BLOB and TIMESTAMP) are corrected. TIMESTAMP now returns different date information depending on its create length.
Changed parser to allow a database, table or field name to start with a number or '_'.
All old C code from Unireg changed to C++ and cleaned up. This makes the daemon a little smaller and easier to understand.
A lot of small bug fixes done.
New INSTALL files (not final version) and some information regarding porting.