[debian-mysql] Bug#528503: mysql-server-5.0: please bundle rarely-used files into a seperate package

[Marc Lehmann]

Package: mysql-server-5.0
Version: 5.0.51a-24
Severity: wishlist


The mysql-server-5.0 package comes with a lot of files that are probbaly
used rarely, if ever, and are also rather huge:

   /usr/bin/ndb_*
   /usr/sbin/ndb
   /usr/sbin/mysqlmanager
   /usr/bin/ndb_*
   /usr/bin/comp_err
   /usr/bin/mysql*test*
   /usr/bin/resolve_stack_dump
   /usr/bin/resolveip
   /usr/bin/mysql_tzinfo_to_sql
   /usr/bin/my_print_defaults
   /usr/bin/myisam_ftdump
   /usr/bin/myisamlog
   /usr/bin/myisampack
   /usr/share/mysql/mysql-test/

Most of those are the related to the test suite, but some seem to be
rather gratitious, such as resolveip, which is 1.3mb in size here and
doesn't seem to do anything that a dozen other utilities already do. Most
of the commands look like internal commands that are not supposed to be
installed anyways. (There also seems to be a dependency on perl somewhere
that mysqld itself doesn't seem to have, which pulls in another 50+mb).

The files take up more than 100MB on my disk, which is a multiple of the
actual mysql database server and it's files.

Some programs I left out could clearly be smaller (perror, replace), but
are actually used, although they have little to do with a database and
should probably also come from some utility package.

And some programs such as mysqld_safe seem to be misplaced: mysqld_safe
is in /usr/bin, but it's sole purpose is to call mysqld, which is in
/usr/sbin.

All in all, it seems the mysql install scripts just dump a lot of garbage
during installation that shouldn't actually be installed.

It would be wonderful if the mysql-server package could be used on smaller
systems as well, as the actual server is much much smaller than the rest
of the package.

Thanks, and feel free to ignore this wishlist request :)

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 5.0
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages mysql-server-5.0 depends on:
ii  adduser                3.110             add and remove users and groups
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]  1.5.24            Debian configuration management sy
hi  libc6                  2.7-18            GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libdbi-perl            1.605-1           Perl5 database interface by Tim Bu
ii  libgcc1                1:4.4.0-1~exp1    GCC support library
ii  libmysqlclient15off    5.0.77-1          MySQL database client library
ii  libncurses5            5.7+20081213-1    shared libraries for terminal hand
ii  libreadline5           5.2-3.1           GNU readline and history libraries
ii  libstdc++6             4.4.0-1~exp1      The GNU Standard C++ Library v3
ii  libwrap0               7.6.q-16          Wietse Venema's TCP wrappers libra
ii  lsb-base               3.2-20            Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip
ii  mysql-client-5.0       5.0.77-1          MySQL database client binaries
ii  mysql-common           5.0.77-1          MySQL database common files
ii  passwd                 1:4.1.1-6         change and administer password and
ii  perl                   5.10.0-19         Larry Wall's Practical Extraction 
ii  psmisc                 22.6-1            Utilities that use the proc filesy
ii  zlib1g                 1:1.2.3.3.dfsg-12 compression library - runtime

Versions of packages mysql-server-5.0 recommends:
ii  bsd-mailx [mailx]  8.1.2-0.20071201cvs-3 A simple mail user agent
ii  libhtml-template-p 2.9-1                 HTML::Template : A module for usin

Versions of packages mysql-server-5.0 suggests:
ii  tinyca                        0.7.5-2    simple graphical program for certi

-- debconf information excluded