ddev import-db: Index column size too large. The maximum column size is 767 bytes

Question

When using ddev import-db to import a production db dump for TYPO3 9 into a ddev project I had a mysql error:

"Index column size too large. The maximum column size is 767 bytes."

This seems to be the result of importing a regular utf8 charset db into ddev, which is set up for utf8mb4, using 4 bytes for character, and overrunning the index column size.

What's the solution? (Besides changing the column definition, changing my prod site and db, etc.)

Answer 1

This issue was originally discussed and solved in https://github.com/drud/ddev/issues/654

There is now a way to override the default mysql setting in ddev.

The example MariaDB/mysql override docs show exactly this example.

In your project's .ddev/mysql directory, add a file called utf8ci.cnf (or whatever you want it to be called, as long as it ends in .cnf) with these contents:

[mysqld]
collation-server = utf8_general_ci
character-set-server = utf8
innodb_large_prefix=false