Re: Proposing the retirement of default-mysql-* metapackages for Forky

[email protected] dijo [Wed, May 27, 2026 at 05:30:58PM +0200]:
>> > Can you confirm that no application will be compatible with one or the
>> > other? Like, will my applications stop working with mysql, somehow?
>> >
>> > If not, I don't see the point.
>>
>> I can confirm that (unfortunately named) mysql-ocaml does not work with
>> mysql. Using default-mysql-* package was misleading, expliciting mariadb
>> is definitely a good thing in this case.
>
>Having *one* package that breaks is very different from having *all* to fail.

When (not if!) the packages are named *-mysql and, at some point in the
future, further packages' compatibility breaks, it will surely be seen as
buggy behavior. If the packages are named *-mariadb, the description might
include, “compatibility with MySQL still works as far as we know”. And,
when compatibility breaks, the maintainer will be able to decide whether to
remove the note or fix compatibility _for a while more_, until the
divergence is too large to maintain.