[debian-mysql] Offering mysql-5.5 as an option in squeeze-lts

[Raphael Hertzog]

Hello,

currently we are shipping mysql-5.1 which is no longer supported upstream
and which might have multiple unfixed vulnerabilities (Oracle doesn't
disclose enough details to either verify it or fix them).

We should really offer squeeze users to switch to a supported version
of mysql and that would be version 5.5.

Who would like to drive this forward?

As a first step, I would suggest that we backport 5.5.44-0+deb7u1
for squeeze and we drop the unversioned packages: libmysqld-pic,
libmysqld-dev, libmysqlclient-dev, mysql-common, mysql-server,
mysql-client.

The goal is to not rebuild applications, they would continue
to use the old libmysqlclient16 but would connect to the 5.5
server.

For mysql-common, it might be necessary to build it from mysql-5.5
but we should ensure it also works with mysql-5.1...

And then we perform some test upgrades, and some application tests, and
try to smooth the rough edges. When we're happy we send out a DLA
indicating that mysql-5.1 is EOL but that they can switch to mysql-5.5
if they desire (although it requires a manual upgrade).

What do you think ?

Cheers,
-- 
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer

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