[debian-mysql] status of MariaDB in Debian

[Moritz Muehlenhoff]

On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 05:28:12PM +0200, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've been approached by Monty Widenius and Simon Phipps about the state
> of MariaDB in Debian, as most distros are providing MariaDB packages,
> and sometimes make it the default.
> 
> In a DebConf talk [1] (skip to 42:00 if you only want to hear about
> Debian packaging-related stuff), they clearly stated that they are
> willing to provide manpower that will act as "slaves of the mysql
> maintainers" and "slaves of the security team".
> [1] http://penta.debconf.org/dc13_schedule/events/1073.en.html
> 
> It seems that the best plan would be to provide MariaDB as an
> alternative, rather than replace MySQL. MariaDB aims at staying
> compatible with MySQL, so it is not impossible that we can make it
> a drop-in replacement (though it was mentioned that having foo-mysql
> work with MariaDB could raise trademark issues even if it's only about
> the mysql API).
> 
> Security team, ftpmasters, do you have comments on that?
> 
> MySQL maintainers, would you be willing to mentor MariaDB people?
> Is someone else on pkg-mysql-maint@ willing to?

Having mariadb instead of mysql in jessie is very much desirable.

However, currently the Debian MySQL maintainers don't keep up with
even mysql alone. We still miss the Oracle 5.5 update from July in wheezy
and in squeeze even the one from April!

So unless we can get additional manpower into the Debian MySQL maintenance 
team so that they can keep up with security releases, having both is only 
making things worse.

Cheers,
        Moritz