Rewrite maxctrl

Included with MaxScale 25.10.3 is new implementation of maxctrl. However, as 25.10.3 is a maintenance release, it does not replace the existing maxctrl but is called maxctrl2 and is provided in a separate optional package maxscale-maxctrl2.

maxctrl2 is implemented in C++ and is thus not dependent upon node.js, as the original maxctrl is. Functionality-wise maxctrl2 is intended to be fully backwards compatible with maxctrl and will eventually replace that.

A notable improvement in maxctrl2 is TAB-completion, which makes it much more suitable for interactive use than what maxctrl is.

Original Description

Maxctrl is currently written in JavaScript, to be run by node.js. The original reason for this was idea that not only is JavaScript very well suited for manipulating JSON, but the same library code could be used both by maxctrl and SkySQL/Monitor. It felt like a good idea at the time, but shared usage of the library code has not happened and will not happen.

The drawback of node.js is that it cannot be a assumed to be present on all platforms, which means that for deployment maxctrl is turned into a stand-alone executable. That is cumbersome and also causes the startup of maxctrl to be slow.

However, Python can be assumed to be available everywhere, so by rewriting maxctrl in Python, everything can be streamlined while simultaneously providing a better user experience to users.

Changes compared to existing MaxCtrl

• The use of the -p, --password option with a password given as an argument will be removed. This is inherently unsafe and any workarounds by obfuscating it will only give a false sense of security. The supported methods of providing credentials in the new versions will be to pass them via environment variables (which are safe), to write them into the configuration file or to pass them via the standard input.