[debian-mysql] Discussion on handling 5.6 related matters

[Clint Byrum]

Excerpts from Akhil Mohan's message of 2014-07-09 12:29:24 -0700:
> 
> Hi Robie,
> 
> Consider the case when a user goes for co-installed data dir for
> multiple variants as /var/lib/fork{1,2,3,...} and plans to remove all
> forks. I have following questions:
> 
>  1. Will purging the server package for each fork trigger removal of
>     data dir or purging mysql-defaults will remove data dir ?
>  2. If the removal is associated with mysql-defaults, then in
>     co-installed setup will mysql-defaults remove all data dirs at once
>     or allow selection ?
>  3. If all data dirs will be removed together, then it is possible to
>     accidentally remove more than required. How will we control this ?
>  4. Since user might do manual data dir creation and also add the
>     required entries in config manually so the mysql-defaults package
>     may always not know if data dir is present and might remove user
>     accounts owning the custom data dir leaving data inaccessible. Will
>     we check for only standard data dirs or read them from config files ?

In 'remove' we don't remove the user. In purge we do, but files outside
the package maintainer's configuration reach are really not the package
maintainer's problem.

IMO we should not go through the config file in purge and remove
datadirs that we did not configure.

>  5. I see possibility of config files getting custom location during
>     manual setup ? Do we see this as trouble ?

Maintainer scripts and the like should be concerned with automating _the
common case_, and with getting out of the way in the uncommon case. So
we should take responsibility for the datadir for each package, but
leave anything else alone.