Re: About packages that depend on mysql-* / mariadb / virtual-mysql-*

[Andreas Beckmann <anbe@debian.org>]

Hi,

there are a few more bits forgotten in the mysql-5.5 -> mysql-5.6
transition. E.g. digikam has
  Build-Depends: mysql-server-core-5.5 | mysql-server-core
which is not satisfiable in stretch (any only by chance still works in sid).
Luckily this seems to be the only package in stretch affected by this.
I didn't check sid, there seem to be several false positives due to old
source packages being still available in sid (for Built-Using or
outdated binaries on some platforms).

No bug filed so far against digikam, maybe Otto can do this.

For simplifying potential transitions between mysql and mariadb I'd
suggest to introduce a set of default-mysql-* (or mysql-default-* or
whatever you like) packages, probably comparable to mpi-default-{dev,bin}.
IMO, these should be real packages that depend on the corresponding
package from the (currently) preferred implementation. Unique virtual
packages could work, too, but might make things more complicated.
The virtual-mysql-* packages are not unique (there are multiple
providers), so they cannot be used as the first alternative (or only)
dependency.

All packages that are not specific to one of the two implementations
(i.e. can work with both alternatives equally), should have such a
*-default-* package as the first alternative in their (Build-)Depends.

If the packages have to be touched anyway to fix versions or add
(mariadb) alternatives, maybe such an approach with *-default-* could be
considered as a more generic solution.


Andreas