MariaDB 10.3 causing mysqld: unknown variable 'innodb-file-format=barracuda’

Issue: MariaDB server version 10.3 doesn't start when configured according to documentation. Aborts with error mysqld: unknown variable 'innodb-file-format=barracuda’.

Previous setup instructions for Frappe Bench required to add some variables to /usr/local/etc/my.cnf:

[mysqld]
innodb-file-format=barracuda
innodb-file-per-table=1
innodb-large-prefix=1
character-set-client-handshake = FALSE
character-set-server = utf8mb4
collation-server = utf8mb4_unicode_ci

[mysql]
default-character-set = utf8mb4

This is also still in several documentations:

• https://github.com/frappe/bench/wiki/MariaDB-conf-for-Frappe
• https://github.com/frappe/bench/wiki/Turning-a-Mac-into-a-Frappe-Framework-Developer-Machine

If you are on MariaDB 10.2 this will work just fine but on version 10.3 this will cause the MariaDB server to not start properly with an error message like 2018-06-21 13:05:39 0 [ERROR] /usr/local/Cellar/mariadb/10.3.7/bin/mysqld: unknown variable 'innodb-file-format=barracuda’

According to the MariaDB configuration (https://mariadb.com/kb/en/library/xtradbinnodb-server-system-variables/#innodb_file_format) Barracuda is default for >= MariaDB 10.2.2 so I removed the line. After that the next error that crashes it is 2018-06-21 13:22:02 0 [ERROR] /usr/local/Cellar/mariadb/10.3.7/bin/mysqld: unknown variable 'innodb-large-prefix=1.

I tried searching the forum and didn’t come across similar problems.

So which one of the two is it:

1. I have completely misconfigured my MariaDB Server config files
2. The config file must be changed and the documentation updated

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Edit my.cnf according to https://github.com/frappe/bench/wiki/MariaDB-conf-for-Frappe
2. Run MariaDB Server 10.2 succesfully (probably your current version)
3. Run MariaDB server 10.3 unsuccessfully (brew update)

Related issue is https://github.com/frappe/bench/issues/670

Start with the MariaDB configuration wiki page and the Mac developer-machine documentation named in the issue, then compare their settings with MariaDB 10.3 behavior and the linked issue #670. Update the affected instructions so the documented setup matches the supported MariaDB version, and verify that the configuration allows the server to start.