[Development] MYSQL / MariaDB pre-build plugins

[Kevin Kofler]

Thiago Macieira wrote:
> Can you explain why this isn't done now? Why can't we build against the
> MariaDB libraries and ship those, with their ability to connect to MySQL
> servers?

FYI, this is exactly what Fedora (and I think also several other
distributions) are already doing.

Even legacy versions of Qt can be built against current MariaDB libraries
with minimal patches:
https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/qt/blob/master/f/qt-everywhere-opensource-src-4.8.7-mariadb.patch
https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/qt3/blob/master/f/qt-x11-free-3.3.8b-mariadb.patch

Current Qt 5 (and I presume and hope, Qt 6) just works as shipped, i.e., it
can be built against current MariaDB libraries without any patches.

A separate MariaDB plugin would only make things more complicated and
needlessly break backwards compatibility.

        Kevin Kofler