MySQL Sandbox even more sandboxed

In the late evening of March 31st I had a good coding session with MySQL Sandbox. I implemented a feature that has been in the wish list for long time. Checking the port before installing, and providing a non used port that positively avoids conflicts is a great step forward.

Now you can do things like this:

$ make_sandbox 5.1.33 --check_port --no_confirm
$ make_sandbox 5.1.33 --check_port --no_confirm
$ make_sandbox 5.1.33 --check_port --no_confirm
$ make_sandbox 5.1.33 --check_port --no_confirm
$ make_sandbox 5.1.33 --check_port --no_confirm

And you will get no errors!
The Sandbox will create msb_5_1_33_a, msb_5_1_33_b and so on, using ports 5133, 5134, 5.1.35, and so on, without manual intervention. Running the above commands 30 times, you would find these sandboxes:

ls -d msb_5_1_33*/
msb_5_1_33/    msb_5_1_33_a/  msb_5_1_33_b/  msb_5_1_33_c/
msb_5_1_33_d/  msb_5_1_33_e/  msb_5_1_33_f/  msb_5_1_33_g/
msb_5_1_33_h/  msb_5_1_33_i/  msb_5_1_33_j/  msb_5_1_33_k/
msb_5_1_33_l/  msb_5_1_33_m/  msb_5_1_33_n/  msb_5_1_33_o/
msb_5_1_33_p/  msb_5_1_33_q/  msb_5_1_33_r/  msb_5_1_33_s/
msb_5_1_33_t/  msb_5_1_33_u/  msb_5_1_33_v/  msb_5_1_33_w/
msb_5_1_33_x/  msb_5_1_33_y/  msb_5_1_33_z/  msb_5_1_33_aa/
msb_5_1_33_ab/ msb_5_1_33_ac/

And they would be using ports from 5133 to 5162.
I felt very pleased with myself and I thought "I should blog about it." But I looked at the time. Hmm. 20 minutes to midnight. If the blog post comes up as April 1st, then it would be taken as an April fool joke.
Wait a minute! A devilish thought crossed my mind, and refused to leave. Perhaps I could announce something, after all. So, in about 10 minutes, I implemented the Query Analyzer replica.
It took several man-year to the Enterprise Team to do the real Query Analyzer (great job, guys!) My implementation time was quite faster than theirs, although admittedly the screen shot looks poor in comparison.

The Query Analyzer	The Fish Analyzer

In ten more minutes, I wrote the blog post, and I changed the published time to March 31st 11:55pm, to remove the telltale date, and off I went.
It was a great success. Some colleagues ⁽¹⁾, who saw the post but didn't bother to try the code, sent me concerned messages, blaming me for jeopardizing the company business, weakening the global economy, melting the North Pole ice, and making Bambi cry. Unfortunately, we work in a networked environment, so I could not see their faces when I told them to look at the calendar ...
I also got a few bug reports, complaining that the --query_analyzer option didn't work as advertised. One of the reporters, who had actually seen the fish analyzer screenshot, still insisted on the lack of analysis in the application. Oh, well. Someone just don't get it!
Anyway, the ephemeral Sandbox Analyzer, a.k.a. The Fish Analyzer, has been deprecated and removed in version 2.0.98d. Not an April's fool anymore. The --check_port option is the real thing!

⁽¹⁾Not from the Enterprise Team. No sane developer would think that a man alone could create the Query Analyzer in his (limited) spare time!