Frictionless MySQL installation

I saw an interesting post about the ability of installing MySQL 5.7 without changing existing tools and procedures. The post is a plea to make MySQL installation frictionless.

That post was followed by a conversation on Twitter, where the recent security enhancements are blamed for getting in the way of existing practices and need a rewrite of installation tools.

I know the problem very well, as I have faced the installation change in MySQL Sandbox. SO I can sympathize with the ones who have to change deployment tools that rely on mysql_install_db, which was a Perl script up to version 5.6, then it was replaced with a C++ program in 5.7 and deprecated in the same version.

It occurred to me that, in order to keep the existing tools working and at the same time having a recommended installation, a DBA could just quickly replace the existing mysql_install_db with the following shell script:

#!/bin/bash
exec_dir=$(dirname $0);

if [ ! -x $exec_dir/mysqld ]
then
    echo "$exec_dir/mysqld not found"
    exit 1
fi

$exec_dir/mysqld --initialize-insecure --explicit_defaults_for_timestamp $@

This is Unix only solution. A corresponding script for Windows should be easy to come by.

It is not the optimal way, but it could alleviate the work of a DBA that wants to use tools that would be too cumbersome to adapt to the new requirements.