[mythtv-users] Heads up - Gentoo 0.22 Upgrade Coming Soon

[Michael T. Dean]

On 03/01/2010 07:31 PM, Richard Freeman wrote:
> To be honest this issue sort-of crept up.  MySQL migrated their 
> preferred locale settings but most distros lagged on implementing 
> this, so most MythTV devs didn't get exposed to the problem.

Will you guys (meaning all the people I've seen who keep doing this--and 
I'm not mentioning any distros/people by name) please quit telling the 
world that MySQL changed the defaults and MythTV developers didn't notice.

 From MySQL 5.1.41 (no particular reason for choosing that version other 
than it's relatively recent and it's the one whose source I happen to 
have lying around), for example:

$ grep DEFAULT_CHARSET configure
DEFAULT_CHARSET=latin1
   default_charset="$DEFAULT_CHARSET"
#define MYSQL_DEFAULT_CHARSET_NAME "$default_charset"

read the script in full (or just run it without specifying 
--with-charset or --with-collation) to find out for sure that, in fact, 
latin1 *is* the default character set (and, therefore, latin1_swedish_ci 
is the default collation) for MySQL--as it has been for versions 3.0, 
4.0, 4.1, 5.0, 5.1, 5.5, ...  (Feel free to check all the versions to 
verify that I'm correct.)

And if you look at support-files/my-*.cnf.sh , you'll find that none of 
the example/"recommended" MySQL configuration files (for use as 
/etc/{,mysql/}my.cnf) they provide even specify 
character_set_server/character-set-server nor UTF (with any capitalization).

and the example/"recommended" init script for the server 
(support-files/mysql.server.sh) does not specify --character-set-server 
or --collation-server.

See also
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/internationalization-localization.html
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/charset.html
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/charset-syntax.html
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/charset-server.html

where the last one says:
-----
Initially, the server character set and collation depend on the options 
that you use when you start mysqld. You can use --character-set-server 
for the character set. Along with it, you can add --collation-server for 
the collation. If you don't specify a character set, that is the same as 
saying --character-set-server=latin1. If you specify only a character 
set (for example, latin1) but not a collation, that is the same as 
saying --character-set-server=latin1 
--collation-server=latin1_swedish_ci because latin1_swedish_ci is the 
default collation for latin1. Therefore, the following three commands 
all have the same effect:

shell> mysqld
shell> mysqld --character-set-server=latin1
shell> mysqld --character-set-server=latin1 \
               --collation-server=latin1_swedish_ci
-----

TTBOMK, what changed was the default configuration chosen by packages 
for a certain distro, which build MySQL by specifying a value for 
--with-charset and, perhaps, --with-collation that override the MySQL 
defaults with distro-specified defaults and/or provide a start script 
that specifies --character-set-server and, perhaps, --collation-server 
to start the server with a specific character set that overrides the 
MySQL defaults.

Now, if you're saying that someone who does MySQL development told you 
to change the default configuration your distro uses, that's a whole 
other matter than "MySQL migrated their preferred locale settings" or 
"MySQL changed the default character set."  And, really, when someone 
recommends a change of a program that's a required dependency of 
another, you might want to at least try to figure out the effect that 
change would have on the program that depends on it.

That said, whomever chose to change the default for the distro had no 
way of knowing that it would break MythTV because no one took the time 
to test the effect of changing the MySQL server character set on MythTV 
until after 0.21-fixes was released, and every time someone who used one 
of these misconfigured*** MySQL servers found an issue, they did /very/ 
bad things to their database to "fix" the problem rather than actually 
exploring the issue to see what was happening.

So, please get your facts straight before you start accusing others of 
breaking stuff you**** broke or being unaware of bigger changes (that 
didn't occur).  Thank you.  And, I apologize in advance for my 
attitude--but you really shouldn't be blaming us.

Mike

***Regardless of what anyone may say, from MythTV 0.21-fixes and below's 
standpoint, the MySQL server was misconfigured--because it was 
configured differently from the required configuration.  That said, no 
one had explored the issue to even realize that the required 
configuration was required.

****Where "you" means whoever decided to just change the defaults in the 
distro.