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MySQL upgrade obstacles
Stumbling Blocks
Benjamin Franklin famously said, "… In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." From this quotation, we can determine that he was not, in fact, a system administrator; if he were, he'd have added "software upgrades" to that list.
MySQL is no exception to Benjamin Franklin's famous quote. After all, on October 21, 2023, MySQL 5.7 entered end-of-life (EOL) status. Consequently, no patches or updates will be available from official sources, and although MySQL 8.0 has been in General Availability (GA) status since 2018, many users have not yet upgraded. Since you're reading this article, you may very well be among them.
Fortunately, with some planning, you can take the sting out of this particular mandatory upgrade. I won't be able to discuss every breaking change or possible issue you might encounter, so be sure to follow the official MySQL instructions.
To begin, I'll discuss which systems can upgrade to MySQL 8.0 and what you can do if you aren't eligible.
Who Can Upgrade?
The upgrade to MySQL 8.0 or later is only possible from the 5.7 General Availability (GA) releases, not release candidates or other development releases. The earliest GA release is 5.7.9; versions of 5.7 earlier than that will have a suffix (e.g., "5.7.8 rc" for the release candidate or "5.7.1 m11" for milestone 11).
Likewise, upgrades from versions before the 5.7 major release are not supported. So, for example, if you have a MySQL 5.6 installation still running, you will first need to upgrade to MySQL 5.7. After that, you can upgrade an installation to 8.0.
Generally speaking, MySQL only officially supports upgrades across one major release, so if you want to upgrade from, say, 5.7 to 8.2, you'll first have to upgrade your MySQL 5.7 installation to MySQL 8.0, then 8.1, and finally 8.2. It's worth noting that MySQL 8.0 goes
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