Further Review Of MySQL 5.5 Packages [1]
Yesterday I found the time to do another look at the current packages. It
appears that they install fine and the unversioned dependency packages for
server and client can be installed without displacing an existing mysql-5.1
installation. I think this is good because I expect an upgrade from 5.1 to
5.5 is going to break a few things and so not having it happen automatically
is a good thing.
Upgrading with 5.1 already installed does seem to be somewhat problematic. I
believe this is primarily because mysql-common-5.5 Breaks Breaks: mysql-server
and client-5.1 while mysql-server/client-5.5 require mysql-common-5.5 so we
end up stuck in a bit of a dependency loop. I got most of the way there with
dpkg and --auto-deconfigure in my testing and managed it with a bit of manual
futzing. Perhaps apt would do better.
Assuming that's sorted, I think we ought to offer a dependency package that
upgrades client and server to make that easier. Something like:
> Package: mysql-5.5upgrade
> Priority: extra
> Architecture: any
> Depends: libmysqlclient18 (= ${binary:Version}), mysql-client-5.5
>
> (= ${binary:Version}), mysql-client, mysql-server-5.5 (=>
${binary:Version}),
> mysql-server, mysql-common-5.5 (= ${binary:Version}), mysql-server-core-5.5
> (= ${binary:Version}), ${misc:Depends}
>
> Description: Squeeze LTS dependency package to ease upgrade to MySQL 5.5
>
> In order to avoid disrupting existing systems, the mysql-5.5 packages for
> squeeze-lts do not force an upgrade to MySQL 5.5. Installation of this
> package will upgrade mysql-5.1 to mysql-5.5. While there may be
> integration
> issues associated with the upgrade, it is generally recommended because
> upstream is no longer providing security support for MySQL 5.1.
> .
> This is only a dependency package and can be safely removed once the
> installation is complete.
With that, then a user could upgrade with mysql-5.5upgrade to get both client
and server upgraded, with mysql-server-5.5 to get only a server upgrade if
only the server is installed, and with mysql-client-5.5 if only the client is
installed.
I saw the discussion about reverse-depends. I'm glad that's being worked as I
believe it's important. Also, I think a DLA for this is entirely appropriate
because, AIUI, the major reason for offering 5.5 is because 5.1 no longer gets
security support from upstream. Upgrading to 5.5 probably does fix security
issues, we just don't know what they are.
Scott K
[1] https://people.debian.org/~santiago/debian/santiago-squeeze-lts/
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