March 26, 2026
As the community looks ahead to new LTS releases of both MySQL and MariaDB over the next couple months, the timeline for Skeema v2 has finally taken shape. In this post, we’ll reveal the preliminary schedule, and also cover some important changes to EOL database support, download URLs, and more.
Skeema v2 timeline
After our first Skeema v2 blog post last year, we took a beat to reassess ongoing developments within the MySQL and MariaDB communities – as well as give Skeema users more time to update to Skeema v1.13, which added important deprecation warnings related to planned changes in v2.
We can now give a more concrete update on the remaining v1 releases and the initial v2 branch cut:
- There will be at least one more Skeema v1 release series (v1.14), which will include support for the upcoming MySQL 9.7 LTS (April) and MariaDB 12.3 LTS (May/June) server versions.
- Right after that, Skeema development focus switches to v2. The “main” branch of our FOSS repo will reflect v2 changes.
- The initial Skeema v2 release target is planned for H2 of this year.
Even after the v2 branch cut, Skeema v1 will remain supported, with additional v1.14.x patch releases occurring as-needed if any important bugfixes need to be backported. Users who prefer to stay on Skeema v1 can do so for many years – without any time pressure, due to its support for this year’s upcoming LTS server versions. Based on prior LTS policies, we anticipate Oracle will support MySQL 9.7 through 2031, while MariaDB will support 12.3 until 2029.
Ending support for MySQL 5.x and MariaDB 10.1-10.3
Last year in our v2 RFC, we originally planned to drop only MySQL 5.5 and MariaDB 10.1 from Skeema v2. But as our release schedule has shifted and users have migrated to newer database server versions in the meantime, we’re expanding this list to cover additional EOL databases. This will allow a larger-scale cleanup of old logic in Skeema’s codebase and test suites.
Skeema v2 will now drop support for MySQL 5.5 through 5.7, as well as MariaDB 10.1 through 10.3. These database versions became available 8+ years ago, and have been EOL for more than 2 years. The next Skeema v1 release will mark these server versions as deprecated, logging a non-fatal warning upon their use, but they will always remain supported in Skeema v1.
Changes to Skeema download formats and URLs
Beginning with v2, there will be some minor adjustments to how we package and distribute Skeema. To ease in this transition, future-proof download redirector URLs are now available, so that users can update any automation and CI pipelines well in advance of the v2 release. Skeema’s install docs were updated in January to use these URLs, so head over there to see the new recommended download instructions.
Avoiding “latest” download URLs
GitHub provides a stable URL format for obtaining the latest release of any repo, but they don’t provide anything more granular, such as “latest release in v1”, nor latest patch of a specific major.minor. Our app.skeema.io download redirector URLs solve this by fully supporting versions like “v1” (latest v1.minor.patch, but never v2+) or “v1.13” (latest v1.13.patch), in addition to fully-pinned versions like “v1.13.2”.
If your automation currently uses a download URL with “latest”, we strongly advise switching to an app.skeema.io redirector URL containing “v1” instead. Otherwise, at some point “latest” will start returning Skeema v2 files, which may break your automation pipeline if you haven’t resolved all upgrade considerations yet.
File naming changes
For each OS, architecture, and archive format, we’ve avoided adjusting Skeema download filenames in recent years, in order to prevent automation breakages for users. However, some of our file naming is inconsistent, in terms of some file formats containing the version number and others lacking it; additionally, some naming is “incorrect” relative to how e.g. RPMs and DEBs are supposed to be named. This will be corrected across the board in v2 from the get-go, so users should expect nearly all of our download filenames to change.
To help mitigate this, our app.skeema.io download redirectors are intentionally forgiving of inconsistencies: the exact file name doesn’t matter, as long as the URL specifies enough information to identify a valid version, OS, and architecture. You can specify the version in the path, the filename, or both, as long as they don’t conflict. The redirectors also support various aliases, e.g. “darwin” and “mac” and “macos” are all equivalent; ditto with architectures (“amd64” == “x86_64”, and “arm64” == “aarch64”). This way, you can switch your download URLs to the redirectors today with v1, and not worry about anything breaking in the future when you decide to switch the version to v2 or higher, even if the underlying file names change.
Mac format changes
For boring historical reasons, Skeema for Mac is distributed as a .tar.gz file in the Community Edition, but as a .zip or .dmg in the Premium Edition. Beginning with Skeema v2, we will consolidate on .zip only, for all Mac downloads.
To simplify this change for automated Mac setup scripts, we now retroactively supply Mac .zip files for Skeema Community Edition versions released in the past three years (Skeema v1.10+).
Additionally, builds for Intel Macs will be dropped entirely with Skeema v2, since Apple will no longer be supporting Intel CPUs beginning in macOS 27 later this year.
What about features?
Our posts about Skeema v2 have intentionally only focused on deprecations and upgrade process so far, in order to allow users ample time for future-proofing configurations and automation pipelines. But of course, Skeema v2 will also include compelling feature changes to make the upgrade worthwhile. We’ll cover this more in future posts, but you can expect some general themes of new features to include:
- DDL execution and OSC tools: more conditional knobs around external OSC tool use (e.g. ability to bypass the OSC tool if an alteration allows
INSTANT, or for tables with FKs or triggers that conflict with the OSC tool) - Complete MariaDB coverage: support for system-versioned tables, sequences, routine packages
- Improved partitioning: more diff operations relating to partitioning changes
- Foreign key improvements: ability to strip/ignore them by environment
- New workflows: allowing users to easily combine Skeema with other tools and new use-cases
- Repo/file layout flexibility: configurable control over how your .sql files are grouped and organized within subdirs
Please note this list isn’t set in stone, and many of these features will come in future 2.x releases, not necessarily the initial 2.0 release.
We warmly welcome community feedback on all planned changes for Skeema 2.0, as well as suggestions for additional items to consider. Share your thoughts on the GitHub Discussions thread.