Rails-like Database Migrations?

Question

Is there any easy to install/use (on unix) database migration tools like Rails Migrations? I really like the idea, but installing ruby/rails purely to manage my database migrations seems overkill.

Answer 1

Just use ActiveRecord and a simple Rakefile. For example, if you put your migrations in a db/migrate directory and have a database.yml file that has your db config, this simple Rakefile should work:

Rakefile:

require 'active_record'
require 'yaml'

desc "Migrate the database through scripts in db/migrate. Target specific version with VERSION=x"
task :migrate => :environment do
  ActiveRecord::Migrator.migrate('db/migrate', ENV["VERSION"] ? ENV["VERSION"].to_i : nil)
end

task :environment do
  ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(YAML::load(File.open('database.yml')))
  ActiveRecord::Base.logger = Logger.new(STDOUT)
end

database.yml:

adapter: mysql
encoding: utf8
database: test_database
username: root
password:
host: localhost

Afterwards, you'll be able to run rake migrate and have all the migration goodness without a surrounding rails app.

Alternatively, I have a set of bash scripts that perform a very similar function to ActiveRecord migrations, but they only work with Oracle. I used to use them before switching to Ruby and Rails. They are somewhat complicated and I provide no support for them, but if you are interested, feel free to contact me.