It’s actually a core limitation, we get out version data from the $wpdb->db_version() function, unfortunately it seems many package managers now have a weird versioning scheme for MariaDB where they prefix it with the, and I don’t even know if this is the right term, “Effective MySQL equivalent version”.
I did notice this on my test site before release, but given that it’s a test site, and did not give the same warning on my live site, along with the fact this is a core feature, I did not consider it an issue.
So what are the details?
Well, When core fetches the server version, it does so by using a native PHP function, the result for my test site for example, which runs one of the latest MariaDB setups, ended up being 5.5.5-10.3.10-MariaDB-1:10.3.10+maria~bionic (yes, it’s a bit of a mouthful).
What core does, is takes the version, and only maintains the first set of version digits (that is to say 5.5.5 in that string, the first section up to a any non-numeric character).
Why didn’t the plugin report this as invalid previously?
Previously, the plugin got it’s version by querying the SQL server directly, this is arguably more accurate, but also means you’ll have errors if an SQL connection fails, or the server is configured to not reveal version data in this way.
With that background, it was decided to let the Site Health Check also use the core feature (mind you, the debug page already used this), to be consistent between views, avoid errors, and to use core features when applicable.
Now, the 5.5.5-prefix is a hack added by MariaDB, and any MariaDB aware client will strip this off and report the correct version any way,
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All of that said, the plugin also serves as a testing grounds for changes to come for the areas already in core, the change in how versions are gathered was already put into WordPress’ code, and is planned to be included in version 5.3 of WordPress it self, by pushing the plugin update now we get a chance to see how these changes will affect things, and we can make informed decisions based off this moving forward.
Suffice to say, ti’s being looked into, and once the best course of action ahs been determined, it’ll be fixed in a reasonable time.
