[debian-mysql] InnoDB (and other plugins) for Debian

[Luk Claes]

Norbert Tretkowski wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm currently thinking about the best way to provide additional plugins
> like InnoDB 1.0.4 for Debian. To compile to plugin, the complete source
> code of MySQL is required, so we have two options:
> 
> - Include these plugins into the regular mysql-dfsg-5.1 source package, 
>   and create mysql-plugins-* packages during the regular build.
> - Create a separate mysql-plugins(-*) source package.
> 
> I prefer a separate source package, but we would need a mysql-source
> package in Debian, so we could build-depend on it.
> 
> Comments?

Packages that were doing this are reconsidering and merging back. One of
the problems is that it's not easy to comply with the GPL when you
cannot guarantee that the source matches the binaries. Another problem
is that the plugin will probably need to be updated every time mysql
gets uploaded, which either means extra source package uploads or
binNMUs both of which are extra manual actions to keep them in sync. For
testing migration they very probably have to migrate together anyway
which currently still needs Release Team interaction to hint it in
together. All these issues are avoided when it's only one source package.

So in short, I would advise against creating a -source package and would
build the plugin binary packages from the same source package as mysql.

Cheers

Luk