DM: optimistic shard DDL conflict on single source has no recovery path (unlock-ddl-lock rejects skip-and-wait-for-redirect; force-remove ignored)

What did you do?

Run an optimistic shard-merge task on a single source (two databases of one MySQL instance merged into one downstream table). Execute a conflicting DDL on one branch, e.g. ALTER TABLE db1.tb1 CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_bin vs ALTER TABLE db2.tb1 CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_general_ci (different collations).

What did you expect to see?

The conflict can be resolved through the documented manual path (unlock-ddl-lock, correcting the upstream, or restarting the task).

What did you see instead?

The lock enters skip and wait for redirect and every recovery path fails:

• unlock-ddl-lock (skip/exec) → 38020 "lock ... is in skip and wait for redirect status, not conflicted" (Optimist.UnlockLock only accepts ConflictDetected operations)
• unlock-ddl-lock --force-remove → same 38020 (the optimistic branch ignores req.ForceRemove; dm/master/server.go:959-965 only passes req.Op)
• upstream correction DDL never arrives: the same binlog stream is blocked at the conflicting DDL (checkpoint frozen)
• stop-task + start-task: the lock is recreated from etcd and replay conflicts again

The task is permanently stuck; the only way out is remove-meta/recreate, which loses the checkpoint.

Root cause

• Optimist.UnlockLock rejects any operation whose conflict stage is not ConflictDetected (dm/master/shardddl/optimist.go:270-278)
• Server.UnlockDDLLock optimistic branch ignores req.ForceRemove (dm/master/server.go:959-965)
• single source: both branches share one binlog stream, so no other source can drive the redirect (multi-source recovery was not verified in this environment)

Versions

• tiflow master 52c8e141f; also present on release-8.5

Note

The conflict detection itself is correct (schemacmp reports "incompatible collation"); the broken part is the recovery path for the ConflictSkipWaitRedirect state. Single-source optimistic shard merge has no code check or test coverage (all optimistic tests use double sources).

Production reachability

• Trigger prerequisites: shard-mode: optimistic (explicit user config) + a conflicting DDL across branches (different collation, column-type change, ADD NOT NULL, etc. — the conflict set DM documents as unsupported) + single-source topology (two databases of one MySQL instance sharing one binlog stream).
• Frequency: medium-low (requires the optimistic-mode + conflict-DDL combination). Single-source optimistic shard merge is a legal configuration (no code check rejects it; no test covers it — all optimistic tests use double sources).
• Consequence: task permanently stuck (checkpoint frozen at the conflicting DDL), sync interrupted; recovery requires remove-meta/recreate, losing the checkpoint. The documented manual recovery path (unlock-ddl-lock) is unusable for the skip and wait for redirect state.
• Reachability: medium (config-combination gate). Multi-source optimistic recovery was not verified in this environment — it may be recoverable via another source driving the redirect; the single-source deadlock is reproduced deterministically.

Suggested labels

area/dm, type/bug, affects-8.5, severity/major, impact/func-failure, subject/replication-interruption (label add requires repo admin/triage rights, which the reporter does not have).

Start in dm/master/shardddl/optimist.go around Optimist.UnlockLock and dm/master/server.go around lines 959-965, then run the existing optimistic shard-DDL tests. Add coverage for a single-source conflict in ConflictSkipWaitRedirect and verify that unlock or force removal recovers the task without removing metadata or losing the checkpoint.