Hi Otto,

Thank you for starting this discussion!

> With the recent releases of MySQL 9.7 and MariaDB 12.3, there is now
> enough divergence between the two codebases to warrant dismantling
> this metapackage. Their SQL dialects, authentication methods and other
> features have drifted to the point where treating them as
> interchangeable drop-in alternatives under a single virtual package is
> becoming misleading. We have already seen this friction for example in
> the Perl ecosystem had to split into libdbd-mysql-perl and
> libdbd-mariadb-perl because the underlying drivers can no longer
> support both engines.

I agree that MySQL and MariaDB have diverged substantially enough at this point 
to where they should
not be considered interchangeable anymore. Likewise, I agree that it would 
probably be best to get
rid of the default-mysql-* packages.

What is the plan for packages that are made specifically for MySQL, but happen 
to currently work
with MariaDB in Debian? On the Ubuntu side, I would like them to continue 
depending on MySQL with as
little delta as possible. The best way to do that would probably be to either 
keep those packages in
unstable if they need to depend on libmysqlclient-dev or mysql-server, or use 
the OR operator in the
dependency, such as `mysql-server | mariadb-server` with mysql-server listed 
first.

Thanks,
Lena

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