cc-ci-orchestrator/cc-ci-plan/upstream/ghost.md

Upstream sources — ghost

service	image	source repo	releases / changelog
app	ghost	https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost	https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/releases
db	mysql	https://github.com/mysql/mysql-server	https://dev.mysql.com/doc/relnotes/mysql/8.4/en/

Standing notes

• Ghost 6.x stores ALL content in MySQL (database__client: mysql), NOT sqlite. Marker/test rows live in the ghost DB.
• MySQL 8.0 → 8.4 (LTS): no application-level migrations needed for Ghost's usage. Default value changes are internal to InnoDB (e.g. innodb_io_capacity 200→10000, innodb_flush_method fsync→O_DIRECT). The ci_marker table and Ghost schema survive the upgrade intact.
• The recipe ships a literal start_period: 15m on both app and db healthchecks (added in recipe PR #1) to handle cc-ci's slow first-boot MySQL schema migration (~6-15 min). The compose.ccci.yml overlay mirrors this for the upgrade-tier BASE deploy.
• Ghost 6.x Docker images use the -alpine variant; pin to X.Y.Z-alpine (not X.Y.Z-alpine3.NN) for simplicity.
• MySQL 9.x is NOT supported by Ghost — do NOT bump mysql past 8.x. Ghost's official docs (https://ghost.org/docs/faq/supported-databases/) state verbatim: "MySQL 8 is the only supported database in production." Ghost is built for "Ubuntu, MySQL 8, nginx and Node.js LTS"; MySQL 9.x is not mentioned anywhere in their compatibility docs. Additionally MySQL 9.0.0 itself was pulled by Oracle ("no longer available for download ... removed due to a critical issue"), and 9.x removes the mysql_native_password auth plugin (deprecated in 8.0) and now ENFORCES inline foreign-key specifications (previously silently ignored) — both real breakage surfaces Ghost has not certified against. abra recipe upgrade will keep flagging 9.0–9.7 as available; treat that as a false-positive candidate list and SKIP (staying on the 8.4 LTS tag, which resolves to the latest 8.4.x patch). Re-evaluate only if Ghost publishes MySQL 9 support guidance. (Confirmed still-true on 2026-06-22.)