More Permissive MySQL driver

[b4rlw]

Hello, I'm wondering if there is any scope to replace mysqlclient with a more permissive driver.

I appreciate this may not be possible due to the effort involved (I'd be happy to contribute to any attempt), and the fact it has already been done once moving from pymysql (for stability reasons?).

My organisation has concerns about GPL2 distribution triggers, if for example, our application wheels or images referencing mysqlclient ended up on contractors' personal machines or somehow mistakenly became available outside of the org.
While not very probable, it is enough for them hesitate using Ibis' MySQL backend.

However, I notice there are other more permissive drivers available such as mariadb, mysql-connector-python (similarly licensed to mysqlclient but with a FOSS exception) that may be a suitable replacement.

Another option would be to allow initialisation of the MySQL backend with any driver compliant to a certain API spec.
For example, I notice I can still initialise an Ibis connection from pymysql using from_connection, I just can't install the Ibis MySQL backend without also getting mysqlclient.

[cpcloud]

Yeah, the bring your own connector approach is nice, but I haven't thought about testing which would require parameterizing on driver and packaging (though utilizing extras for that seems like a fine approach).

Alternatively, different drivers could be best effort support; that is, we don't test them beyond extremely basic "does it connect to the database" tests.

[b4rlw]

I appreciate it would be a big maintenance burden to fully support every possible dialect/driver combination!
Are you suggesting we would have extras like ibis-framework[mysql-<my-pluggable-driver>]?