[debian-mysql] Debian packaging diffs for ubuntu

[Monty Taylor]

Mathias Gug wrote:

> > One of the big tasks I've been trying to wrap my head around (because
> > it's a big complaint from our developers about package-based installs)
> > is supporting multiple concurrently installed versions of the software.
> > I was going to propose something like how java is doing it, with things
> > installed into /usr/share/mysql/<version> or something and an
> > update-mysql-alternatives command. This could also allow us to have
> > different concurrent things like the guy who wanted packages of Carrier
> > Grade  and the folks who are wanting 5.1 packages... Any thoughts?

> I strongly advise you to look at the postgresql package. Martin Pitt has
> setup a complete infrastructure to handle multiple instances of
> postgresql on a system. I think that the Debian maintainers have plans
> to support that use case and were thinking about basing their work on
> the postgresql package.

Ok, I looked at this. Seems like they are doing the first part of what I
was suggesing. I'm fine with copying their directory layout. (there is a
file called architecture.html in the postgresql-common package)

I'm not sure what all the cluster situation is about, but I would think
that we'd be talking about instances instead of clusters. I also think
that by default, the install should create a single db instance and that
everything should work as expected without having to grok the
multi-instance architecture if all you want to do is a single instance.
(KISS)

I'm not sure how I feel about the pg_wrapper program vs. the
JAVA_HOME/update_java_alternatives approach. That's the real part that
might be a bit problematic. Doing pg_wrapper would involve a separate
program that could have bugs, but gives more flexibility for different
users to have different default database versions. I'm not so sure
that's as useful for the MySQL world. I think the alternatives based
approach might make a little bit more sense, where you'd want the one
main system default version and if you want to use a different version
then you should know what you're doing.

But I'm obviously open to debate.

Monty