[mythtv-users] mysql (or mariadb) version for 0.27 under Gentoo

[Karl Newman]

On Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 10:41 PM, Paul B. Henson <henson at acm.org> wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 02, 2014 at 09:53:37PM -0800, Karl Newman wrote:
>
> > While mysql may have languished in Gentoo a bit, what functions or
> features
> > from 5.5 were you hoping to get? IMO, your database engine is not
> something
> > you should have to give much thought to. Why not just go with the stable
> > mysql for now and then if mariadb becomes stable at some point in the
> > future, Gentoo will almost certainly provide an easy upgrade path.
>
> I don't have any specific functions or features in mind; however, I do
> want to run a version considered stable and supported by upstream, and
> in fairly wide use by the mythtv community. On further investigation, it
> looks like the mysql 5.1 branch isn't dead upstream like I initially
> thought, they just released 5.1.73 last month. So I suppose I could
> just create a local ebuild for 5.1.73 (as Gentoo only has 5.1.70) and
> stick with that for simplicity. OTOH, I'm setting this box up from
> scratch, and it's a lot easier and less work overall to just start with
> the latest version rather than install an old one and deal with an
> upgrade headache later. And for unrelated philosophical reasons I'd
> rather run mariadb than mysql; even from a technical perspective, most
> distributions are switching to mariadb, so why install a variant that's
> on the way out on a new system?
>
> mariadb is certainly stable upstream, not being marked stable in gentoo
> is more an issue of lack of manpower and time than of concern that it's
> not ready to use. If I was going with the gentoo definition of stable
> I'd be installing mythtv .26 rather than .27 :).
>
> Unfortunately, until they switch to the embedded database as has been
> discussed, the database engine does require some thought and
> configuration, as typically the out of the box configuration isn't very
> optimized for mythtv...
>
> fedora switched to mariadb as of version 19, and ships 5.5. ubuntu still
> ships mysql, but even as of 12.04LTS they ship version 5.5, not 5.1
> openSUSE as of 12.3 ships mariadb 5.5, arch linux ships mariadb 5.5...
> So it seems most people using myth not on gentoo are probably going to
> be using mariadb, and even if they're using mysql, it will be 5.5, not
> 5.1, so it just doesn't seem like a good move to base a fresh install on
> mysql 5.1.
>
> Thanks for the thoughts...
>

If you're willing to use a local overlay, why not just keyword the latest
mariadb package and use that instead? Then you can stick with a package
that's already in portage (even if it's marked as unstable/testing). I
guess my earlier point was: for a mature database engine such as mysql, the
typical mythtv user won't benefit from a version upgrade. It's not going to
have some new ZOMG!#@%! speed enhancement (you'd be better off spending
some time on tuning), and it's highly unlikely that you would encounter any
bugs that it fixes. I know it *feels* better to have a higher number in the
version field, but really in the general case it's just a placebo.

Karl
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