Zardosht Kasheff
That being said, I would love to hear feedback on this patch, and would also like to understand what (if anything) can be done to get this into MariaDB 5.1. I realize that may not be possible, but if it is, I would like to try.
I didn't look at the patch yet. However, I would oppose putting this into MariaDB if it is a hodge-podge mixture of the old and the new alter table code. (Just imagine if the existing code you had to work in had already contained 4 versions of alter table code, from MySQL 3.x, MySQL 4.0, MySQL 4.1, and MySQL 5.1, say. I'm sure you found the task sufficiently tricky with just one version to understand). On the other hand, it might make good sense to support the old interface in storage engines, for example by implementing a backward-compatible emulation of the old API on top of the new alter table code. How is it done in the original Cluster tree that you based your work on? Does it convert all storage engines to the new interface? Does it implement backwards compatibility on top of the new interface, leaving (some) storage engines unmodified? Or does it contain both the old and the new code, like your patch? - Kristian.