Dear Maintainer,

Following a recent discussion on debian-devel@[1], there is a plan to dismantle
the default-mysql-* virtual package construct provided by the mysql-defaults
source package. 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 in the Forky (Debian 14) cycle.

This is filed with severity 'normal' as this change is not urgent.

We are asking maintainers to drop any dependencies on these virtual packages:
* default-libmysqlclient-dev
* default-mysql-client
* default-mysql-client-core
* default-mysql-server
* default-mysql-server-core

However, how this is handled in is in your discretion based on the details of
how the package is maintained and tested in Debian. There are mainly three
options:

- Direct switch: The most straightforward approach is to switch defaut-mysql-*
  directly to the MariaDB equivalent (libmariadb-dev, libmariadb-dev-compat,
  mariadb-client, mariadb-server, etc). For example 'Recommends: mariadb-server'.

- Dual compatibility: If the package actively supports both engines and you wish
  to keep an alternative runtime path open for users drawing from third-party
  repositories, you can declare an OR dependency. For example
  'Depends: mariadb-client | mysql-client'.

- Specific constraint: If your package does not work with MariaDB, feel free to
  tailor the package relationships to match that constraint. This is however
  very unlikely as all Debian releases in past decade have only shipped with
  MariaDB, and the open source ecosystem has largely shifted to lean towards
  MariaDB.

This change is targeted specifically for the Forky cycle and does not affect any
existing stable releases.

Thank you for your time and your work maintaining cacti-spine in Debian!

[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2026/05/msg00161.html

Hi Otto,


cacti-spine Build-Depends on default-libmysqlclient-dev. In Ubuntu the
default is still to use MySQL TTBOMK, do you suggest I use this as BD:
libmariadb-dev | libmysqlclient-dev

On Debian buildds the alternative is ignored, so you get what you're
asking for, but do you know if this works for Ubuntu? If not, what do
you suggest instead? I prefer to do my packaging in Debian downstream
friendly, so I hope we can find a solution that doesn't require Ubuntu
to patch cacti-spine for this.

Paul