[arch-dev-public] [RFC] Migration to MariaDB

[Lukas Jirkovsky]

On 18 February 2013 18:42, Bartłomiej Piotrowski <b at bpiotrowski.pl> wrote:
> Hello guys,
>
> Because Oracle is Oracle is Oracle(…) I would like to propose migration
> to MariaDB.
>
> Jokes aside, the biggest problem with MySQL situation is that it becomes
> more and more closed source. Oracle stopped publishing regression
> tests[1], informative security advisories, they even hide bug reports
> and not include them in release notes[2]. Very often their bzr
> repository is falling behind new releases[3].
>
> On the other hand, MariaDB is truly open source (it doesn't have
> enterprise-only options) and has open development model. Security
> advisories are published first on the mailing list for packagers with a
> patch for current release and information when the bug will be fixed and
> when the information about security hole can be published (Another
> advantage for ricers -- some benchmarks show that MariaDB is faster.)
>
> From packaging side, MariaDB is (still) drop-in replacement for MySQL.
> Unfortunately they are not fully compatible[4] and I don't want to lie
> that I tested every package depending on MySQL before I pushed Maria to
> [community], but since April 2012 there has been no bug report about
> breakage. However I don't want to use replaces=, because clearly it
> won't work for everyone.
> Additionally switching now should be less problematic. MySQL 5.6 is
> already out and it is not as compatible with incoming MariaDB 10 as it
> was with 5.5 branch. While we keep Maria and MySQL branches in sync, it
> should be quite safe.
>
> To get back to the point… This is how I would see the migration plan:
>
> 1. Synchronize MariaDB and MySQL systemd units.
> 2. Move MariaDB to [extra].
> 3. Rebuild packages depending on mysql/libmysqlclient/mysql-clients
> against its MariaDB counterparts.
> 4. Announce MySQL deprecation.
> 5. After month, drop MySQL to AUR.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Cheers,
>
> [1] http://blog.mariadb.org/disappearing-test-cases/
> [2]
> http://ronaldbradford.com/blog/when-is-a-crashing-mysql-bug-not-a-bug-2012-08-15/
> [3]
> http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2012/08/16/where-to-get-a-bzr-tree-of-the-latest-mysql-releases/
> [4] https://kb.askmonty.org/en/mariadb-vs-mysql-compatibility

As long as it doesn't break anything I'm completely fine with moving to MariaDB.