allow for opting in to string-columns-as-byte-arrays

[osheroff]

allow code using the 0.5.X series opt-into the future behavior without having to use custom deserializers.

It's kludgy, it's true, but Maxwell definitely needs its string data as byte arrays, and I'd prefer to not add in a bunch of custom deserializers just to throw them away in 1.0.

[shyiko]

Ben, how about I introduce 1.0.0 compatibility flag (something like binaryLogClient.setEventDeserializer(new EventDeserializer().setReleaseCompatibility("1.0.0")); that would enable

• DATETIME/DATETIME_V2/TIMESTAMP/TIMESTAMP_V2/DATE/TIME/TIME_V2 deserialization to longs (Unix timestamp).
  This is BACKWARD-INCOMPATIBLE change.
• BINARY/VARBINARY deserialization (#56).
  This is BACKWARD-INCOMPATIBLE change as CHAR/VARCHAR/BINARY/VARBINARY are now returned as byte[] (which you can obviously convert to String with new String(byte[], Charset) if needed).

This way you won't have to bother with date/time when 1.0.0 is released (in fact, these are the only changes that affect the data types in 1.0.0).

What do you think? Would this work for you?

[osheroff]

sure, good by me.

[shyiko]

Alright, 0.6.0 should become available within ~20 minutes or so (Maven Central).

Here is the snippet to activate 1.0.0 compatibility mode:

EventDeserializer eventDeserializer = new EventDeserializer();
eventDeserializer.setCompatibilityMode(CompatibilityMode.DATE_AND_TIME_AS_LONG,
    CompatibilityMode.CHAR_AND_BINARY_AS_BYTE_ARRAY);
binaryLogClient.setEventDeserializer(eventDeserializer);

[osheroff]

awesome, thanks @shyiko. My WIP is surprisingly close to passing tests n stuff.