The intent is to always pack the latest stable MariaDB software into Fedora.
MariaDB series
MariaDB 10.0 - until Fedora 23
MariaDB 10.1 - until Fedora 26 ( modules: F28 - F31)
MariaDB 10.2 - until Fedora 28 ( modules: F29 )
MariaDB 10.3 - until Fedora 31 ( modules: F28 - F35 )
MariaDB 10.4 - until Fedora 33 ( modules: F29 - F35 )
MariaDB 10.5 - until Fedora 39 ( modules: F32 - F39 )
MariaDB 10.6 - modules only ( modules: F34 - F39 )
MariaDB 10.7 - modules only ( modules: F34 - F39 )
MariaDB 10.8 - modules only ( modules: F34 - F39 )
MariaDB 10.9 - modules only ( modules: F35 - F39 )
MariaDB 10.11 - versioned package - current (F40 - Rawhide)
Versioned packages:
After the end of Fedora Modularity, the unversioned MariaDB package 'mariadb' was transformed to versioned package 'mariadb10.11'.
We developed a technique to be able to dynamically add new versioned MariaDB packages, to be available in parallel, as well as keeping compatibility with the older setups.
There may be multiple versioned packages, e.g.: 'mariadb10.11', 'mariadb10.12', 'mariadb10.13'. One of them is set as the 'distribution default' version. That means that while all other variants will only produce versioned RPMs (e.g.: 'mariadb10.13-server', 'mariadb10.12-test'), the 'distribution default' version will produce the classic unversioned names (e.g.: 'mariadb-server', 'mariadb-test').
MariaDB versions
There is a lot of work being done in both Fedora and by upstream developers.
New version of MariaDB are released quarterly.
The packaging process usually takes from a few days up to two weeks, depends on issues encountered.
Connectors
Beginning from Fedora 28, mariadb-connector-c is the default package that should be used by all of the client software.
This package now contains the client library, while it was removed from the mariadb package.
Also mariadb-connector-c-devel package should contain everything needed for building the client software against mariadb.
Only very very few cases needs mariadb-devel package, such as custom server plugins or embedded applications.
For ODBC there is mariadb-connector-odbc package.
For Java there is mariadb-java-client package.
Other software
Since MariaDB is very compatible with MySQL, most of the mysql connectors could be used with MariaDB and vice versa.
Parallel Installability
Historically, I tried to offer parallel installability or cross-installability of MariaDB x MySQL.
This is not the case any longer, as MariaDB and MySQL diverted significantly and are far from being drop-in replacements nowadays.