[debian-mysql] Bug#842011: Bug#842011: Bug#842011: default-mysql-client forces removal of mysql-server* and mysql-client*

[Clint Byrum]

Excerpts from Craig Sanders's message of 2016-10-26 12:10:49 +1100:
> On Tue, Oct 25, 2016 at 01:09:23PM +0100, Robie Basak wrote:
> > I agree with you, but the release team have made their decision against our
> > wishes. There's no point arguing with us. We know.
> 
> since when does the release team tell maintainers what they're allowed
> to package?  or what solutions they're allowed to come up with for
> easily-forseeable problems?
> 

The point of the stable release is security updates with minimal impact.
The security team has decided MySQL makes that exceedingly difficult
because of the CVE's reported against it without full disclosure. They
are ultimately responsible for those updates (though maintainers from
Oracle have helped quite a bit) and they do not want to carry the burden
anymore. They also seem to think our users don't like those CVE's,
though I never saw any real evidence of that.

> > > if this is the plan then there really needs to be a foolproof, automated,
> > > thorougly tested migration script. and even then it should still be easy
> > > to back out and revert to mysql.
> >
> > This does not exist, and currently nobody has the time to work on this.  I
> > believe MySQL->MariaDB works right now, but the reverse direction certainly
> > doesn't. Users should take backups before upgrading.
> 
> the problem is binary db-file compatibility, so the obvious method would be to
> dump to text from mysql, possibly do some minor fixups to the text dump with
> sed or pœrl if required, restore into mariadb.
> 
> and the reverse for converting from mariadb to mysql.
> 

You can definitely do that as a user. But automating it just isn't
something anybody has had time to do and feel good about it, given that
we're talking about peoples' data.