[debian-mysql] status of MariaDB in Debian

[Clint Byrum]

Excerpts from Moritz Muehlenhoff's message of 2013-08-20 09:07:44 -0700:
> 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.
> 

You can pry MySQL from the cold dead hands of all the reverse deps. ;)

But seriously, there are enough differences, this is not a switch,
it is an enablement.

> 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!
> 

Indeed, the currently active maintainers of MySQL count about one. My
work in Debian is lower priority than wife, children, day job, and my
own personal health (read: sleep). This means that about once a week
I get a chance to look at the state of MySQL in Debian and spend maybe
an hour on it. That usually entails pushing the latest update (working
on 5.5.33 right now) into unstable and, if it has high priority security
fixes, stable-security. Oldstable doesn't even get a look usually.

> 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.
> 

Agreed that having both is more work. However, I personally have no real
interest in working on MariaDB. I have nothing against it, but MySQL
is sufficient, and not going anywhere any time soon without a *lot*
of work. I see no real benefit to adding MariaDB, but I am not going to
stand in the way and will do whatever I can to facilitate it and make
sure they can coexist.

If I had my choice I'd rather that interested parties focused on MySQL
5.6 and keeping wheezy up to date. I know that the popular decision is
to burn Oracle at the stake, but I have wrestled with Oracle's silly
policies enough now that I am comfortable with them.