migratekit

migratekit

Minimal database migration library with app-scoped migrations and automatic locking.

Install

go get github.com/open-rails/migratekit

Usage

PostgreSQL (Complete Example)

package main

import (
    "context"
    "database/sql"
    "embed"

    "github.com/open-rails/migratekit"
    _ "github.com/lib/pq"
)

//go:embed migrations/postgres/*.sql
var postgresFS embed.FS

func main() {
    ctx := context.Background()
    db, _ := sql.Open("postgres", "postgres://...")

    // Load migrations from embedded FS
    migrations, _ := migratekit.LoadFromFS(postgresFS, "migrations/postgres")

    // Run migrations (2 lines; ApplyMigrations ensures the tracking table)
    m := migratekit.NewPostgres(db, "doujins")
    m.ApplyMigrations(ctx, migrations)

    // Optional: target a configured schema. Unqualified migration SQL runs
    // under SET LOCAL search_path = "<schema>", public.
    m = migratekit.NewPostgres(db, "doujins").WithSchema(cfg.DB.Schema)

    // Optional: if migrations are authored with hard-qualified canonical DDL,
    // rewrite that app-owned schema to the configured schema while applying.
    m = migratekit.NewPostgres(db, "openrails").WithSchema(cfg.DB.Schema, "openrails")
}

ClickHouse (Complete Example)

ClickHouse support lives in its own subpackage, migratekit/chmigrate, which imports github.com/ClickHouse/clickhouse-go/v2. The root migratekit package has zero ClickHouse imports: if you only need the Postgres migrator, go mod tidy never pulls in the ClickHouse client (Go's module graph pruning drops it once nothing in your module imports migratekit/chmigrate).

package main

import (
    "context"
    "database/sql"
    "embed"

    "github.com/open-rails/migratekit"
    "github.com/open-rails/migratekit/chmigrate"
    _ "github.com/lib/pq"
)

//go:embed migrations/clickhouse/*.sql
var clickhouseFS embed.FS

func main() {
    ctx := context.Background()
    pg, _ := sql.Open("postgres", "postgres://...")

    // Load migrations from embedded FS
    migrations, _ := migratekit.LoadFromFS(clickhouseFS, "migrations/clickhouse")

    // Run migrations (3 lines)
    m := chmigrate.New(&chmigrate.Config{
        ClientAddr: "clickhouse:9000",
        Database:   "analytics",
        Username:   "analytics_user",
        Password:   "analytics_password",
        App:        "doujins",

        // ClickHouse migrations are tracked in Postgres public.migrations
        // (database='clickhouse') and use Postgres advisory locks.
        PostgresDB: pg,
    })
    m.ApplyMigrations(ctx, migrations)
}

Startup validation (read-only)

// Fail app startup if any migration is pending. Never creates tables.
err := migratekit.ValidatePostgresMigrations(ctx, db,
    migratekit.MigrationSource{App: "authkit", FS: authkitFS},
    migratekit.MigrationSource{App: "billing", FS: billingFS},
)

// ClickHouse equivalent, in the chmigrate subpackage:
err = chmigrate.ValidateMigrations(ctx, &chmigrate.Config{App: "doujins", PostgresDB: pg}, clickhouseFS)

When boot refuses: operator runbook

The identity checks stop a migration from silently never running. That is worth a boot refusal — but only if there is a way out of it that is not psql and a hand-written UPDATE public.migrations. Since v1.6.0 there is:

go run github.com/open-rails/migratekit/cmd/migratekit@latest status \
  -app tensorhub -dir migrations/postgres -dsn "$DATABASE_URL"

status prints, for every discrepancy, WHAT is wrong (file, number, both digests), the LIKELY CAUSES, and the command that resolves each one. Every boot refusal ends by pointing at it.

Rows 1 and 4 are the same error with opposite fixes, which is why status prints both causes and you pick. The question to ask is which side is stale, the files or the ledger? Renumber when a colliding file really exists; adopt when it does not.

The repair verbs

migratekit repair adopt 42 --reason "restored the 2026-08-10 backup"
migratekit repair adopt --all-unmatched --reason "adopted the doujins cluster"
migratekit repair accept-content 7 --reason "comment typo; DDL byte-identical"
migratekit apply --allow-below-applied 91 --reason "backport of the th#1712 index"
migratekit history          # everything anyone has ever repaired here

Every one of them:

• requires --reason, recorded verbatim — a ledger repair with no recorded reason is indistinguishable from tampering;
• writes an audit row to public.migration_repairs (verb, reason, --operator, the OS user, the host, and the old and new identity) in the same transaction as the change. A repaired ledger is visible history, not an erased one;
• touches the ledger's identity columns only — never schema, never DDL, and never marks an unapplied migration applied;
• supports --dry-run, which prints the exact before/after and writes nothing;
• refuses to run in CI. A repair rewrites one database's ledger after a human has read the diff. If every database trips over the same thing, the chain is wrong and the fix belongs in the repository.

The same verbs are available to Go callers as (*Postgres).RepairAdopt, RepairAdoptAllUnmatched, RepairAcceptContent, ApplyWithOrderingException and RepairHistory, all taking a RepairRequest{Reason, Operator, DryRun}.

Stable API (v1)

Everything in this section is the v1 compatibility boundary. Within v1.x it will only grow — no removals, no signature changes, no breaking behavior changes to the documented contracts below. Anything NOT listed here (unexported helpers, exact error message text, internal locking mechanics) is an implementation detail and may change in any release.

Loading

Postgres

ClickHouse (migratekit/chmigrate, since v1.4.0)

ClickHouse is a separate subpackage so the root package never imports github.com/ClickHouse/clickhouse-go/v2. Its stable surface:

Multi-source startup validation

Frozen behavioral contracts

These behaviors are part of the API and will not change within v1.x:

1. Tracking table: public.migrations (id, app, database, schema, name, filename, content_sha256, status, error, migrated_at, UNIQUE(app, database, schema, name)) with database ∈ {postgres, clickhouse}. Its shape is stable. Since v1.6.0 public.migration_repairs records every repair; prefer migratekit repair over editing either table by hand, because only the verbs write the audit row.
2. Tracking key: the normalized numeric prefix (Prefix), not the filename — renaming 001_users.up.sql to 001_accounts.up.sql does not re-apply it. Since v1.5.0 the row also records the full filename and a content digest: a number applied by a different file is a hard error instead of a silent skip, and an edit to a migration that already ran is reported (a warning since v1.6.0, an error under WithStrictContent).
3. Discovery: only *.up.sql files; *.down.sql is reserved; numeric-prefix ordering; duplicate prefixes are a load error.
4. Locking: appliers are serialized by Postgres advisory locks held on a dedicated pinned connection for the duration of the apply; the lock is taken only when unapplied migrations exist; process death releases the lock with the connection.
5. Templates: {{VAR}} / ${VAR} substitute from the environment at apply time; an unset variable is an error; an explicitly-empty variable substitutes as-is; {{ON_CLUSTER}}/${ON_CLUSTER} expand from chmigrate.Config.Cluster (empty → removed).
6. Postgres atomicity: one migration = one transaction — the DDL and its ledger row commit together, so a failed migration applies nothing and records nothing. The one exception is explicit: a migration whose leading comment block carries -- migratekit:no-transaction runs outside a transaction and can fail half-applied; the ledger then records it failed (or running after a crash) and boot refuses until an operator resolves it.
7. Postgres schema targeting: WithSchema(schema) sets a per-migration transaction search path for unqualified SQL. WithSchema(schema, "canonical") also rewrites app-owned canonical schema references to schema before execution; use this for portable hard-qualified DDL, not for shared schemas like public.
8. ClickHouse non-atomicity: statements are split (quote-aware) and run individually; a partial failure leaves earlier statements applied and the migration unrecorded — every statement must be individually idempotent.
9. Ownership: migrators never close a *sql.DB you pass in.

Added in v1.5.0 (migration identity)

The applied-migrations ledger was keyed by the migration NUMBER alone, which is not an identity: two different files that each claim number N normalize to the same key, so once one is applied the other is reported "already applied" and its DDL never runs — no error, clean boot, green suite. LoadFromFS rejects two colliding files in one tree, but the damaging case never has both in one tree: lane A's N is applied to a live database, lane B renumbers or reverts, and B's N is skipped forever.

v1.5.0 records filename and content_sha256 next to the key and checks them on every apply:

• Identity — number N applied by a different file is a hard error naming both files and demanding a renumber.
• Integrity — a migration edited after it ran is a hard error.

Both are always on and cannot fire spuriously: rows written by ≤v1.4.0 carry no identity, and unknown reads as unknown, never as a mismatch. The two new columns are added by Setup(); no consumer action is required.

• Ordering — WithStrictOrdering() additionally refuses a pending migration that sorts below one already applied. Opt-in, because existing chains legitimately carry gaps and late arrivals that predate the rule.
• CheckChain(names) validates a chain as a plain file listing (duplicates, gaps, monotonicity) with no database, for a CI gate on the merge boundary.

Execution is unchanged: appliers are serialized by the advisory lock and migrations run one at a time, in order.

Changed in v1.6.0 (the resolution path)

v1.5.0 made three failures visible. It did not make any of them resolvable: the boot refused, named the problem, and left the operator with psql. v1.6.0 is the other half — status, four audited repair verbs, and one relaxation.

Content drift is now a WARNING, not a boot error. An operator who edited a migration that already ran often cannot restore the old bytes, and a database held down over a comment change is a worse outcome than the divergence the check guards against. The boot proceeds and emits a warning naming the file, both digests, the risk, and repair accept-content. WithStrictContent() restores the v1.5.0 refusal.

The other two are unchanged. A number applied by a different file is still a hard error — it is the silent-never-runs killer, and its fix (renumber, or adopt) is always available. WithStrictOrdering() behaves exactly as before.

Everything else is additive: Status, WithWarnFunc, the repair verbs, the public.migration_repairs audit table (created by Setup), and the cmd/migratekit CLI. No consumer action is required, and no call site changes.

Added in v1.7.0 (parent links, no-transaction, repair totality)

Parent-hash links. Every migration carries its parent as its first non-blank line:

-- parent: 5 sha256:9f2c…e1

and the first migration of the chain carries -- parent: root. The chain is verified at LOAD — pure file reading, no database — so boot and CI both inherit it, and there is no second verification point to keep in sync.

Two things follow. An ordering conflict becomes structurally impossible: the lane that merges second has a parent line pointing at a file that is no longer its predecessor, which is a deterministic refusal in its own PR rather than a boot refusal in production. And the directory becomes a hash chain: tampering with history breaks every later link, which is atlas.sum's property with no sum file to maintain.

Refused, each naming both files: a missing parent, a hash mismatch, two files claiming the same parent, two roots, a root that is not the lowest-numbered file, a link that points forward, and a link that skips the immediate predecessor (the stale-after-renumber shape).

The digest excludes the parent line. ContentDigest hashes the canonical body — the file with its own header removed — and that is also what content_sha256 stores. Adding parent lines to already-applied migrations therefore changes no ledger digest: adoption is silent, every digest v1.5.0 wrote is still correct, and there is nothing to backfill.

Renumbering is now git mv PLUS updating your parent line. The error message says so, and migratekit relink does it in one command:

migratekit relink -dir migrations/postgres            # fix the parent lines
migratekit relink -dir migrations/postgres --check    # CI: exit 1 if any are stale

relink is an AUTHORING verb and deliberately does NOT carry the repair verbs' guardrails — no --reason, no audit row, no CI refusal. The repair verbs mutate a production ledger: state that is invisible, shared, and has no history of its own. relink mutates files, and files already have an audit log — git. A --reason would duplicate the commit message, an audit table cannot record a change that may never be committed, and refusing to run in CI would be wrong because relink --check is the CI gate.

A squash resets the chain root, with no special case in the code: a squash deletes the files it replaces, so the squash file is the lowest-numbered file present and legitimately carries -- parent: root. One rule — exactly one root, and it must be the lowest-numbered file — covers squashes and ordinary chains alike.

Adoption. Headerless migrations are tolerated with a warning for one minor version. Mixed chains work: a headed file verifies against a headerless parent (hashing a parent does not require the parent to have a header), so a repo adopts by heading its newest file and letting the rest follow. Load(fsys, dir, RequireParentLinks()) makes a missing header an error. The default flips no earlier than v1.8.0.

-- migratekit:no-transaction. Migrations are transactional by default and the ledger row commits with the DDL. CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY — the only index build that does not take an ACCESS EXCLUSIVE lock on a live table — cannot live inside that, so a migration whose leading comment block carries the directive runs outside a transaction, one statement at a time, still under the advisory lock.

Such a migration may be PARTIALLY applied, and no design makes it atomic. So the ledger holds the state instead of hiding it: running before it executes, applied on success, failed with the Postgres error text on failure, and still running if the process dies. Boot refuses on any row that is not applied — not absent, which would silently re-run half-applied DDL, and not applied, which would silently skip the other half. The operator clears it with the audited migratekit repair resolve N --applied|--rerun --reason "…".

Repair totality. A constraint added over a table that already has rows is a bet that the rows comply, and when the bet loses it fails on a live database mid-boot. So:

A constraint over a PRE-EXISTING table must be preceded, in the same file, by either the repair DML that makes the data satisfy it, or -- Repair: none-needed <reason>.

Position is the rule, not a detail: a repair below the constraint runs after the constraint has already refused the rows. A table CREATE TABLEd in the same file is exempt — no pre-existing row can exist. Detection is a conservative lexical scan of the closed set of DDL that can refuse stored rows (ADD CONSTRAINT … CHECK / FOREIGN KEY / UNIQUE, VALIDATE CONSTRAINT, CREATE UNIQUE INDEX, SET NOT NULL, ALTER COLUMN … TYPE, ADD COLUMN … NOT NULL with no default); when it cannot resolve which table a statement targets it reports UNKNOWN and requires the waiver rather than guessing.

Measuring the real data is how you choose the repair — delete versus backfill is a semantic call you cannot make without looking at the rows — but nothing requires or parses a measurement. CheckRepairTotality enforces the repair.

migratekit check -dir migrations/postgres --require-links   # numbering + links + repair rule

Removed in v1.0 (was public in v0.x)

• Postgres.Apply, Postgres.Lock, Postgres.Unlock, ClickHouse.Apply, ClickHouse.Lock, ClickHouse.Unlock — the manual lock/apply path bypassed the applied-set check and made stateful locking part of the surface; ApplyMigrations is the supported path. (No known consumer used these.)
• Postgres.Close — closed the caller's *sql.DB, which the migrator never owned.
• MigrationSource.FS and the ValidateClickHouseMigrations filesystem parameter are now fs.FS instead of embed.FS (source-compatible: embed.FS satisfies fs.FS).

Changed in v1.4.0 (ClickHouse moved to its own subpackage)

Everything ClickHouse-related moved from the root package into migratekit/chmigrate, to get github.com/ClickHouse/clickhouse-go/v2 (and its ch-go dependency) out of every Postgres-only consumer's build:

• migratekit.ClickHouseConfig → chmigrate.Config (same fields).
• migratekit.NewClickHouse → chmigrate.New (same signature, returns *chmigrate.ClickHouse).
• migratekit.ClickHouse → chmigrate.ClickHouse (same methods).
• migratekit.ValidateClickHouseMigrations → chmigrate.ValidateMigrations.

Migration for existing ClickHouse consumers: change the import to add "github.com/open-rails/migratekit/chmigrate", and replace migratekit.NewClickHouse(&migratekit.ClickHouseConfig{...}) with chmigrate.New(&chmigrate.Config{...}). migratekit.Migration and migratekit.Prefix are unchanged and still used for migration content.

Postgres-only consumers need no code changes; running go mod tidy is enough to drop clickhouse-go/ch-go from go.mod/go.sum.

Compatibility policy

• v1.x releases may add symbols, struct fields with useful zero values, and optional behavior — never remove or change what is documented above.
• Exact error message text is not part of the API; only the documented error conditions are. (Typed sentinel errors may be added additively later.)
• The module follows Go module semver: any future break means v2 with a new import path. The bar for v2 is intentionally very high.

Schema

migratekit creates two tables in the public schema on first Setup():

CREATE TABLE public.migrations (
    id BIGSERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
    app TEXT NOT NULL,
    database TEXT NOT NULL,
    schema TEXT NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
    name TEXT NOT NULL,             -- the ledger KEY: Prefix(filename)
    filename TEXT,                  -- v1.5.0 identity; NULL on older rows
    content_sha256 TEXT,            -- v1.5.0 integrity; NULL on older rows
    status TEXT NOT NULL DEFAULT 'applied',  -- v1.7.0: applied | running | failed
    "error" TEXT,                   -- v1.7.0: why a no-transaction apply failed
    migrated_at TIMESTAMPTZ NOT NULL DEFAULT NOW(),
    UNIQUE(app, database, schema, name)
);

-- v1.6.0: every `migratekit repair` lands here, in the same transaction as the
-- identity change it made. The checks are only worth having if there is a way
-- past them; this is what keeps that way honest.
CREATE TABLE public.migration_repairs (
    id BIGSERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
    app TEXT NOT NULL,
    database TEXT NOT NULL,
    schema TEXT NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
    name TEXT NOT NULL,             -- the ledger key repaired
    verb TEXT NOT NULL,
    reason TEXT NOT NULL,
    operator TEXT NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
    os_user TEXT NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
    host TEXT NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
    old_filename TEXT, old_digest TEXT,
    new_filename TEXT, new_digest TEXT,
    repaired_at TIMESTAMPTZ NOT NULL DEFAULT NOW()
);

Locking:

• Postgres uses advisory locks (no lock table). The lock is acquired and released on a single dedicated connection pinned for the lock's lifetime — session advisory locks belong to the connection that took them, so going through the pool would acquire on one connection and "release" on another. If the process dies mid-migration, Postgres releases the lock when the pinned connection drops.
• ClickHouse uses Postgres advisory locks (same pinning) and requires chmigrate.Config.PostgresDB.

Migration Files

Naming Convention

Files must follow this pattern: {number}{separator}{description}.up.sql

• Number: Any positive integer (leading zeros optional: 1, 01, 001 all work)
• Separator: Underscore _ or hyphen -
• Suffix: Must end with .up.sql

✅ Valid:

001_create_users.up.sql
1_create_users.up.sql
01-add-indexes.up.sql
42-add-timestamps.up.sql
0003_migrations.up.sql

❌ Invalid (will be skipped):

001_create_users.sql        # Missing .up.sql
create_users.up.sql         # Missing numeric prefix
001.create.users.up.sql     # Invalid separator (use _ or -)

Why .up.sql is required:

• Standard convention used by golang-migrate, bun, etc.
• Reserves .down.sql for future rollback support
• Prevents accidental execution of non-migration SQL files

What gets stored: Numeric prefixes are normalized (leading zeros removed) before storage:

• 001, 01, 1 all become "1"
• 042, 42 both become "42"

Ordering: migrations apply in numeric-prefix order (2_x before 10_x), not lexical filename order, so unpadded prefixes are safe.

Duplicate prefixes are rejected: because tracking is keyed by the normalized prefix, two files sharing a prefix (002_users.up.sql + 002_roles.up.sql, or 0042_x vs 42_y) would mean the second silently never runs. LoadFromFS returns an error instead.

Parent line (v1.7.0): the first non-blank line of a migration is -- parent: <number> sha256:<digest-of-the-parent's-canonical-body>, or -- parent: root for the lowest-numbered file. The whole chain is verified at load. Renumbering means git mv and updating that line — migratekit relink does both parts of the second half. Headerless files are tolerated with a warning for one minor version.

Repair rule (v1.7.0): a migration that adds a constraint over a table that already has rows must carry, ABOVE the constraint, the DML that repairs the offending rows — or -- Repair: none-needed <reason>. Tables created in the same file are exempt. Measuring the real data first is how you decide between deleting and backfilling; the gate enforces the repair, not the measurement.

Template Variables

Migration SQL may reference environment variables as {{VAR_NAME}} or ${VAR_NAME}; they are substituted at execution time. A referenced variable that is not set is an error — silent empty-string substitution previously meant a typo'd {{CLICKHOUSE_PASWORD}} shipped an empty password into DDL. A variable explicitly set to the empty string is substituted as-is. {{ON_CLUSTER}} is special-cased for ClickHouse (expanded from chmigrate.Config.Cluster). Avoid ${...}/{{...}} sequences in migration SQL that are not meant as templates.

ClickHouse Semantics

ClickHouse has no transactional DDL. A multi-statement migration that fails partway leaves the earlier statements applied and the migration unrecorded, so the rerun re-executes them. Every statement in a ClickHouse migration must therefore be individually idempotent (CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS, DROP ... IF EXISTS, etc.). Statements are split on ; with full awareness of string literals and comments, so semicolons inside quoted strings are safe.

Features

• Smart locking: Only locks when there's work to do
• App-scoped: Each app has independent migration sequences
• Correct Postgres locking: Uses Postgres advisory locks (no lock table)
• ClickHouse compatibility: Runs ClickHouse DDL via native protocol; tracks applied migrations in Postgres
• Resolvable: every refusal has a migratekit status explanation and an audited repair verb
• Self-contained: Creates own tables on first run
• Minimal: small codebase + minimal dependencies

Design

Why lock only when needed?

Checking what's applied (SELECT) doesn't need a lock. Only write operations need locks. This allows multiple services to check migrations concurrently without blocking.

Why per-app scoping?

Different apps (doujins, hentai0, billing) have independent migration sequences and can migrate concurrently.

Why single table?

Easy to query "show all migrations" and simpler permissions.