Download the MySQL source code, version 5.1.24 or later from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.1.html#source and extract it.

Download the InnoDB Plugin source code from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/.

Replace the contents of the storage/innobase directory in the MySQL source tree with the InnoDB Plugin source tree.

Compile and build MySQL. Instead of building a dynamic InnoDB Plugin, it is advisable to build a version of MySQL that contains the InnoDB Plugin. This is because a dynamic InnoDB Plugin must be built with exactly the same tools and options as the mysqld executable, or spurious errors may occur. Example:

% wget ftp://ftp.easynet.be/mysql/Downloads/MySQL-5.1/mysql-5.1.37.tar.gz
% tar -zxf mysql-5.1.37.tar.gz
% cd mysql-5.1.37/storage
% wget http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/innodb_plugin/innodb_plugin-1.0.8.tar.gz
% tar -zxf innodb-1.0.8.tar.gz
% rm -fr innobase
% mv innodb-1.0.8 innobase
% cd ..
% ./configure --with-plugins=innobase
% make

Reconfigure the MySQL server by editing the my.cnf option file to use InnoDB as the default engine (if desired) and set appropriate configuration parameters to enable use of new InnoDB Plugin features, as described in section Section 9.5, “Configuring the InnoDB Plugin”. In particular, we recommend that you set the following specific parameters as follows:

default_storage_engine=InnoDB
innodb_file_per_table=1
innodb_file_format=barracuda
innodb_strict_mode=1

If you build a version of MySQL that contains the InnoDB Plugin (--with-plugins=innobase), you do not have to tell MySQL to specify ignore_builtin_innodb or specify plugin-load, or issue any INSTALL PLUGIN statements. The mysqld executable that you compiled will contain the new InnoDB Plugin features.