MariaDB replacing MySQL

[Norvald H. Ryeng]

On Tue, 12 Mar 2013 17:59:50 +0100, Honza Horak <hhorak at redhat.com> wrote:

> On 03/06/2013 02:44 PM, Miloslav Trmač wrote:
>> On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 2:35 PM, Norvald H. Ryeng
>> <norvald.ryeng at oracle.com> wrote:
>>> In practice, this means that it will be almost impossible to install  
>>> MySQL
>>> in Fedora. The recipe in the feature page [1] requires the user to
>>>
>>> 1. edit yum.conf to set excludes=mariadb* and obsoletes=0,
>>> 2. run yum shell to replace the packages, and
>>> 3. edit yum.conf again to remove obsoletes=0.
>>
>> I think that the above recipe wasn't updated for the package rename;
>> with the new name, a simple "yum install MySQL" should work.  Honza,
>> is that how it was designed?
>
> Yes, the feature page has been updated to correspond with the renaming  
> of mysql package. Shortly, users will be able to install MySQL-server in  
> a usual way (yum remove mariadb-server ; yum install MySQL-server).
>
> What is a bit different -- MySQL-server requires "mysql" virtual symbol  
> to have utilities like mysql, mysqldump, etc. These are by default  
> provided by package mariadb, so it means MySQL-server will require  
> mariadb base package (in the same manner as all other packages in  
> Fedora, which need mysql client utilities).

I believe the tools should match the server. I.e, MariaDB tools for  
MariaDB server, MySQL tools for MySQL server. I believe there are already  
minor protocol differences between MariaDB and MySQL. Having a MySQL  
server without fully working admin tools is not good.

>> The FESCo decision from the minutes was:
>>> feature owners are asked to make it possible to install the MySQL  
>>> stand-alone server (only)
>> so dependencies on the client libraries are not a concern; Fedora
>> packages are expected to use the MariaDB client libraries.
>>
>>> Everything that depends on mysql will then require mariadb to
>>> be installed, but having both mariadb and MySQL at the same time is not
>>> going to work unless the files in the mariadb packages are renamed.
>>
>> File conflicts within the server packages might still be a concern, I
>> don't know.  Per the decision quoted above, FESCo would prefer the
>> maintainers of the two servers to agree on a solution.
>
> I believe conflicting server packages are not an issue -- users will be  
> able to use one or another.

I disagree. The best example of this not working is the akonadi-mysql  
package which now depends directly on mariadb-server. This makes it  
impossible/very much harder to install MySQL on a KDE desktop. Also, there  
are applications depending on mysql or mysql-server. If the MySQL packages  
aren't allowed to provide those virtual provides, it will be impossible to  
use those applications with MySQL.

The best would be to make the packages non-conflicting, either completely  
separate or using alternatives to set a default.

Regards,

Norvald H. Ryeng