Comment 7 for bug 1781529

> Mecab was in our MySQL packages previously. Was it vendored in by Oracle or by Debian?

It wasn't vendored at all to my knowledge. It's always been a separate package since I noticed it appearing. In Ubuntu, we've chosen to build MySQL without the mecab plugin due to the component mismatch. This MIR is driven by the wish to get back into sync with Debian - it's the only delta left and we keep having to do package merges for the sake of this one difference, which isn't acceptable to Debian to take.

> I understand Debian is dropping MySQL. Is this merge from Debian our last?

Debian still maintains MySQL in unstable. This is preferable for Ubuntu to more easily coordinate with MariaDB packaging so the two work together correctly in the archive.

> So: if there's no future in syncing MySQL package updates from Debian, is this part of the change actually useful?

We want to continue maintaining MySQL in Debian so that Ubuntu can sync from it. This way MySQL and MariaDB will play together in the archive - both for Debian unstable users and for Ubuntu users.

There are possibilities though. If you're not happy putting mecab into main from a security perspective, I might be able to arrange the packaging to use dpkg-vendor and when building on Ubuntu build a separate binary package, if that's acceptable to archive admins (src:mysql-5.7:debian/control not listing a mysql-plugins-extra-5.7 binary package or similar, dynamically added in debian/rules via dpkg-vendor that contains the built MySQL mecab plugin).