plugins can have unused variables too. If they use a literal "Unused"
string a compiler might or might not merge two identical strings into
one (-fmerge-constants) and depending on that the server will or will
not issue a "variable is ignored" warning.
Remove alter_algorithm but keep the variable as no-op (with a warning).
The reasons for removing alter_algorithm are:
- alter_algorithm was introduced as a replacement for the
old_alter_table that was used to force the usage of the original
alter table algorithm (copy) in the cases where the new alter
algorithm did not work. The new option was added as a way to force
the usage of a specific algorithm when it should instead have made
it possible to disable algorithms that would not work for some
reason.
- alter_algorithm introduced some cases where ALTER TABLE would not
work without specifying the ALGORITHM=XXX option together with
ALTER TABLE.
- Having different values of alter_algorithm on master and slave could
cause slave to stop unexpectedly.
- ALTER TABLE FORCE, as used by mariadb-upgrade, would not always work
if alter_algorithm was set for the server.
- As part of the MDEV-33449 "improving repair of tables" it become
clear that alter- algorithm made it harder to provide a better and
more consistent ALTER TABLE FORCE and REPAIR TABLE and it would be
better to remove it.