[debian-mysql] Redesigning the /var/lib/mysql/*.flag thing

[Otto Kekäläinen]

Hello!

Last year (e.g. in [1]) I proposed that a high priority for
mysql/mariadb packaging would be to redesign the downgrade warning
flag thing. I'd say it is the root cause of 80 % of the bug reports on
Launchpad (see [2] and [3]).

By far most users simply don't understand the warning and don't know
how to recover from it. Also the whole idea is rediculus, as dpkg is
not designed in any way to support aborting in the middle of
preinstall scripts. Dpkg just ends up in a conflicting state that
needs to be resolved with dpkg --configure -a (and sometimes that
isn't even enough).

Also none of the graphical tools in Ubuntu support the dpkg abort
process in any sensible way.

Please send in ideas on how to redesign it.

- Otto

[1] http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-mysql-maint/2014-November/007237.html
[2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mariadb-5.5/+bug/1457356
[3] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mariadb-10.0/+bug/1490190