MySQL 8 and database upgrade notices

If you are running WordPress on a server using MySQL 8, you might have noticed an interesting issue when updating some of the Dev4Press plugins for WordPress. You will go to the Update screen and see something like this:

Each upgrade notice references the change of the column type. But, in actuality, nothing is done, because the column type has not changed! MySQL 8 changes the way it reports the database tables structure and returns the column type without the size: BIGINT instead of BIGINT(20). And, WordPress function that actually runs the tables upgrade, doesn’t make the difference, and it reports the notice even so the change of type doesn’t actually happen.

Upgrade screen shows the Database Tables Checklist, and it is only important for that to show [OK] for all tables.

So, if you use MySQL 8, just ignore these notices. Hopefully, future WordPress versions will be able to handle this, or MySQL 8 will be changed back to the normal behavior.