Support for MySQL 8.4 (LTS) in Debian 12 & 13

[erikgieseler]

MySQL 8.4 (LTS) packages for Debian 12 and 13 have been available for several months now.
https://repo.mysql.com/apt/debian/pool/mysql-8.4-lts/m/mysql-community/
It would be great to have these in Docker images as an alternative to Oracle Linux.
Thank you!

[tianon]

It was an intentional change that 8.0 was the last version to have Debian variants (#867), but I do wonder if that's worth revisiting given things like #1117 🤔

[tianon]

Oh right, we end up having similar issues as #1117 with Debian, as evidenced most obviously by our 8.0 version being stuck on Debian Bookworm (no Trixie packages available).

[erikgieseler]

From an admin perspective, going Oracle Linux only is problematic. If the rest of the stack is already Debian-based, introducing a different base OS just for MySQL adds unnecessary divergence. If MySQL 8.4 Debian packages exist, what prevents continuing Debian-based images as well? Is this mainly maintenance or CI overhead? Supporting both variants would provide more flexibility than a single Oracle-only base.

[cpt-erwin]

Hi! I took a stab at this since I needed a Debian-based 8.4 image myself. I'm by no means an expert on this project's internals, but after looking at how 8.0 handles Debian support, I noticed that the main difference for 8.4 seems to be that MySQL uses a -lts postfix for its APT repository path (i.e., mysql-8.4-lts instead of mysql-8.4).

Based ont this assumption, I made the following changes in my fork: cpt-erwin@43d5052

In short:

• Updated versions.sh to handle the -lts repo suffix for 8.4
• Added Debian config to versions.json (amd64 / bookworm) by running the script versions.sh
• Adjusted Dockerfile.debian template to use mysql-8.4-lts in the apt source line
• Generated 8.4/Dockerfile.debian by running the script apply-templates.sh

I tested it locally and it seemed to work ? the container builds and starts up fine with MySQL 8.4.8 on Debian bookworm.

That said, I'm not sure if this is the right/complete approach or if I'm missing something. Would something like this be enough to properly add Debian support for 8.4, or are there other considerations I'm overlooking? Any feedback would be appreciated!