Providing a mysql connector extension on Linux that works independently of system mysql library versions - a pipe dream ?

[Alexander Thurgood]

Le 31/03/12 16:19, Enrico Weigelt a écrit :

Hi Enrico,

Whilst I understand all you have said, and agree with it within the
confines of using a distro oriented and provided solution, you are
failing to take into account both the past and current demand.

The past : Sun and then Oracle, produced and provided a distrib
independent version of the connector to go with their version of
OpenOffice.org - the people who downloaded the official versions of OOo
from Sun/Oracle could then be sure that the mysql connector would be
provided and would work. Today that is no longer the case, not even
Apache has the connector code in its repo, as it was not part of the
Oracle Software Grant. This means that unless some kind soul within the
AOOo community does the work and provides the connector there will be
none for those people that continue to use OOo (I'm thinking of
administrations in France in particular). OK, so that is AOOo's problem,
I hear you say, not ours, and yes, I would agree.

The present : people want/need a mysql connector (which also happens to
work with MariaDB according to reports I've received) to go with their
official download versions that they get from TDF. This is the only way
they can use new stable versions of LO which are updated far more
quickly than any of the distros currently provide, at least to my
knowledge. However, if no generic connector can be built, as Sun/Oracle
used to do, then the whole ecosystem relies on someone being able to
build for each distro out there. As you correctly state, "why bother",
when the distros do it (eventually, sometimes even several months after
the latest official stable release is made). The reason is that there is
a demand. You may not see it, but I see it, it crops up fairly
frequently on the user lists (both in French and English) and similar
questions have been raised on the Extensions site in response to my
posting the Mac and Linux 32bit extensions up for download.
Unfortunately, the way things are at the moment, compared to the way
they were, does not bode well for the future of such a solution, indeed
to me it appears impossible.


Note that I am not going to flog a dead horse, but when I do QA on the
database module, I do it with a mysql connection on the whole and with
the native connector. If the connector that my distrib provides no
longer works with the stable versions or RCs that I test out, then I can
no longer do that QA work and in the end I will give up, or else I will
just build it for myself and test it when I get the time or the
inclination. That of course is just my personal viewpoint, but one
should not ignore that other, more "normal" users, who are consumers of
the system, expect a solution to be provided for something they used to
have which "just worked" with their official version of OOo/LO and no
longer does.




Alex