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Re: Why/how does the MariaDB client depend on libdbd-mysql-perl?

 

Hi, Otto!

On Jun 24, Otto Kekäläinen wrote:
> I am returning to this age-old discussion about libdbd-mysql-perl as
> dependency in Debian:
> 
> > really? why libdbi-perl is required but libdbd-perl is optional?
> > the one makes no sense without the other. and libterm-readkey-perl
> > is required, why it's really optional, everything works without it.
> 
> In MySQL 5.6 this dependency also still exists:
> But it has been dropped in MySQL 5.7 packaging. In 5.7 it is not even
> a Recommends or Suggests, but completely removed.
> http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-mysql/mysql-5.7.git/tree/debian/control
> 
> I don't know what to do about this because I don't really understand
> what or how the mysql client does with perl library dependencies. It
> is a C program, does it really use the perl library in any way? So
> auxilary script does something?
> 
> Can we drop the dependency on libdbd-mysql-perl, and starting from what version?

mariadb-client-10.1 installs innotop and mysqlreport perl scripts that
need libdbi-perl and libdbd-mysql-perl.

mariadb-server-10.1 installs mysql_convert_table_format,
mysql_setpermission, and mysqlhotcopy scripts that need libdbi-perl and
libdbd-mysql-perl.

I don't know what Debian policies say about installing scripts without
required dependencies. May be it's allowed. If not, options are:

- move them all into a separate mariadb-perl-utils package
- rewrite them not to use DBI
- remove them completely from debian packages

note that innotop, as far as I remember, exists as a package an debian,
so that can be easily removed, if debian's innotop is not much
different from ours.

Regards,
Sergei
Chief Architect MariaDB
and security@xxxxxxxxxxx


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