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

[Paul B. Henson]

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...