Hi Paul If I understand correctly, you are suggesting this change: MariaDB is now the default MySQL variant in Debian, at version 10.1. The Stretch release introduces a new mechanism for switching the default variant, using metapackages created from the mysql-defaults source package. For example, installing the metapackage default-mysql-server will install mariadb-server-10.1. - Users who had + For upgrading from jessie, it is recommended to install + this metapackage from the jessie-backports archive so that + users who have mysql-server-5.5 or mysql-server-5.6 will have it removed and replaced by the MariaDB equivalent. Similarly, installing default-mysql-client will install mariadb-client-10.1.
I don't think the release team want upgrades to depend on backports, so I don't that's a viable option here. But let's go back a step - you're saying that if: you have a jessie system with mysql-server-5.x and you dist-upgrade, without explicitly installing default-mysql-server then: mysql-server-5.x gets uninstalled and no mariadb-server-* package gets installed ? If correct, that's a big problem. What the text is trying to tell people to do is to dist-upgrade, then install default-mysql-server. That second action should initiate the uninstall of mysql-server-5.x and then install mariadb-server-10.1. Is that what you took from the text? If not, can you think of a way to make it clearer? Cheers Vince