SemVer is an arbitrary versioning scheme, not a universal standard. It's the operator's responsibility to understand the versioning scheme prior to upgrading.
Some examples...
WL#10310 Redo log optimization:
Feb 2018, initial commit 6be2fa0bdbba, landed in 8.0.11 (Apr 2018)
Jun 2018, crash regression fix commit 270d18368650, landed in 8.0.13 (Oct 2018)
Apr 2019, performance regression fix commit 75c4f7161a56, landed in 8.0.18 (Oct 2019)
WL#5655 - InnoDB: Separate doublewrite file to ensure atomic writes:
Dec 2019, initial commit ce14ef911, landed in 8.0.20 (Apr 2020)
Feb 2020, data loss regression fix commit c1bc61dc7, landed in 8.0.20 (Apr 2020)
May 2020, stall regression fix commit 00b284707, landed in 8.0.21 (Jul 2020)
In comparison, Cassandra during the DataStax days was extremely buggy, but at least it tried to follow SemVer. So the operators can follow some simple guideline, e.g. >=2.0.14 is fine, >=2.1.17 is fine, >=2.2.9 is fine. Of course regression can still happen, but that would be an exceptional case.
(Except Project Jigsaw of course, but I'd like to think that he got overruled by his boss)
As for bugs, I will just quote Gil Tene from https://www.theserverside.com/opinion/Dont-ever-put-a-non-Ja...
> Play with them on your laptop, but don't use a single feature, and wait for the LTS.
Personally I think the LTS model is great. Features get rolled out as soon as they are ready, and then get stabilized after being used by early adopters. Meanwhile, production can stay on LTS and continue to get just the necessary fixes.
Operators must test before upgrading. Luckily some third-party software makes this easier, e.g. Percona's pt-upgrade or ProxySQL's mirroring feature.
I'll state again unambiguously, I'm not personally fond of 8.0's release policy of rolling out new features post-GA. But I view it as an annoyance, and at least one with some upsides (not having to wait 2 years for a massive feature dump all at once) rather than being uniformly negative or "pretty scary". Personally I was careful about testing point release upgrades before 8.0, and I'm still careful about it now.
Nobody expects defaults to change between patch/minor versions.
This is another example of how MySQL does not give a flying F about the footguns it leaves lying around.
Putting the onus on the user is not reasonable; especially in a world where we’re trying to reduce toil or get rid of ops completely.
Also my comment above in this subthread wasn't even about defaults. I only mentioned some features added, and you responded saying it's scary and then talking about defaults?
You don't like MySQL, I get it. Regardless of reasons, I don't think your view will change, so why enter every HN thread about MySQL just to repetitively bash MySQL? What's the purpose of this?
The strict mode setting should have been the default since the beginning. It is absolutely unthinkable that it wasn’t, the only justification I can think of is that:
a) it wasn’t built with that in mind and thus was experimental.
b) was not enabled to ease adoption (this is kinda evil, in my personal opinion because it teaches bad habits)
c) was considered a power-user feature, which is ridiculous.
What you’ve said just exemplifies the trend I’ve seen before: MySQL does not care about creating footguns, and people who have bought into the ecosystem like to exhalt that “you’re holding it wrong”- which is absolutely not a good warning.
If you listen to my rambling about the pain I’ve seen, and you still want to use it: at least it’s an informed decision. But pretending that all is well is not ideal, it doesn’t lead anyone to make better software or practices (MySQL) or better developers (because they don’t see footguns before they’ve sprung some self-inflicted wounds on themselves)
I absolutely agree with that. But what's the point in talking about a terrible default that changed nearly 6 years ago, literally over and over again, year after year?
> the only justification I can think of
The real answer is almost certainly "backwards compatibility". Same reason many things in Windows are non-ideal, for example.
Someone made a really bad technical decision early on, but fixing it overnight will break things for an utterly massive number of paying customers, so it can't be rectified without a slow transition plan. It happens.
Yes, it absolutely should have been fixed on a faster schedule regardless, given its importance. But just because it wasn't, doesn't mean that the entirety of the piece of software is hopelessly flawed and everyone involved in its development is an utter cretin. Especially when a piece of software is multiple decades in age and has gone through multiple corporate acquisitions.
> What you’ve said just exemplifies the trend I’ve seen before: MySQL does not care about creating footguns
What I've said? What footguns? I'm asking this honestly: what are you referring to? Let's recap this subthread:
* @taywrobel said "it doesn't look like much new functionality has been introduced since 8.0.4"
* I listed a number of new features introduced in 8.0 point releases, and explained that MySQL 8 is intentionally not doing SemVer
* You said "that's pretty scary" without ever elaborating on which specific thing I said you find scary
* I disagreed, given MySQL's stated written policy of not following SemVer
* You mentioned something about defaults changing (??? this wasn't even a topic I mentioned by that point in the subthread)
Now you're talking about footguns again, but the only one you're mentioning with any specificity was fixed many years ago.
> people who have bought into the ecosystem like to exhalt that “you’re holding it wrong”
Where has anyone said anything remotely like that in this subthread? Are you referring to my statement that the user should understand what's in an upgrade before upgrading? If so, I absolutely stand by that statement; it's utterly crazy to upgrade any database without even glancing at the release notes, let alone having a basic understanding of how the database vendor handles releases and versioning. This is operational basic practices 101, not about "holding it wrong".
And for what it's worth, "people who have bought into the ecosystem" includes a massive chunk of the S&P500 using MySQL as a primary data store. If it's as deficient as you claim, why aren't all these companies going out of business?
Can you provide an example of an application-side (IOW, not a DB-infrastructure-type variable) that has changed it's default in a patch version after GA in 5.7 or 8.0?
IIRC, all of the defaults changed in very early non-GA versions.
Linux?
Is there another level of patches below point releases for backported security patches, or are your options to upgrade to something that adds new features and may be backwards incompatible, leave your system vulnerable to known security wholes, or patch it yourself (or maybe depend on your distro to do itl
As far as I can recall, the vast majority of modern MySQL CVEs have been low severity and/or require the attacker to already be in your private network.
For sake of comparison -- does Postgres backport every security patch to every major.minor tree? And aren't HA Postgres upgrades generally more difficult than MySQL ones since logical replication is less widespread in the PG landscape?
Unless the security fix in question is not applicable to some branch, yes.
https://www.postgresql.org/support/security/ https://www.postgresql.org/support/versioning/
No, because its unecessary (in my experience)
> or are your options to upgrade to something that adds new features and may be backwards incompatible
It won't be backwards incompatible, otherwise they would leave the change for a new minor release.
Why would you not want a new feature (e.g. the new "clone plugin") if it gives you value now without any migration required (because of incompatibilities that may arise if all new features are left for minor versions which are reserved for incompatibilities)?
Assuming that is true, this sounds like a normalcy bias to me (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias).
> Why would you not want a new feature (e.g. the new "clone plugin")
Because features can introduce bugs or performance regressions. Sure you can say that's rare, but I still might not want to take that risk with some of the most critical infrastructure in my app.