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Switch to MariaDB

PostPosted: 01. November 2015 20:34
by danielo
Hi everyone,

We recently released a new version of XAMPP with MariaDB that did not go as planned. Although MariaDB is a drop-in replacement for MySQL, this particular release is incompatible with the version of phpMyAdmin that we were bundling. This resulted in errors like the ones described in this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=72035

In that thread you will also see a new release that addresses some of those issues and that we will be making official soon. We understand how frustrating this has been for those of you that have run into this issues or that have concerns about replacing MySQL. We want to continue to make XAMPP better with every release, so this is frustrating as well for us. Two of the things that we want to improve moving forward to address this:

- Whenever possible, provide advance information when making major changes. This should give you an opportunity to provide feedback and for us give you more background on why certain changes were desirable or necessary. For example, in the particular case of MariaDB, most major Linux distributions (RedHat, Suse), cloud providers, etc. are migrating to MariaDB from MySQL for a variety of reasons, mostly related to licensing and open development. We have been delaying making the switch ourselves, but did not want to wait any longer if this is were the rest of projects and community were going.

- Provide early access to beta-testers before releasing new XAMPP versions, at least ones that provide major upgrades so we can detect these types of errors early on

There are other priorities for future XAMPP development: building and sharing a roadmap, continue to improve the documentation, Windows 64bit support, PHP 7 support, more frequent releases (at least once a month)

Please let us know which other areas you think we could improve on. I want to thank Altrea for taking the time to provide detailed feedback privately

Best regards

Daniel

Re: Switch to MariaDB

PostPosted: 02. November 2015 13:44
by coder1
I'm attempting to understand the approach by MariaDB. I was one of the frustrated users attempting to utilize both MariaDB 10.0.17 and then 10.1.8 in your XAMPP stack but bugs made it impossible to use. Moving to MariaDB, as you note, is being done for a variety of reasons.

My question is, does MariaDB provide a non-beta relatively guaranteed bug-free version other than their Enterprise edition? And as I understand it, the Enterprise edition has an annual subscription of $19,500 US dollars.

A very prominent individual in the profession yesterday explained the following to me on this topic. He wrote: "The MariaDB website provides a useful description of the difference between Community and Enterprise editions. The Community Edition focuses on "fast innovation, including both mature, tested enhancements and cutting-edge experimental technologies", whereas the Enterprise edition integrates "the most stable of these advances in a curated, enterprise-grade product, bringing reliability and ease of deployment to customers." In other words, the Community edition is like a public beta; it might have bugs. The Enterprise edition, on the other hand, is meant to be the stable public release." The full discussion on this matter can be found at https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1973311

Therefore, the MariaDB bundled in the stacks will be of what nature? Will the MariaDB version be at a level such that one can use it as a development/test platform so that efficiencies can be had? I for one do not wish to spend more wasted, unproductive time chasing bugs around on whatever GUI, be it PMA, HeidiSQL, etc., because MariaDB is not sufficiently stable. It is very frustrating since on MariaDB's website they note even 10.1.8 is a stable release. They did not further note that apparently that pertained to the Enterprise edition not the Community Edition.