[development] versioned schema?

[blake hall]

Maybe we can borrow from the rails world and base this versioning on  
rake's db migrations[0]?

blake hall

[0] http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/UsingMigrations

On Jun 11, 2007, at 1:24 PM, Philippe Jadin wrote:

>> I kinda like #2 the best, but #1 may make more sense with our current
>> hook_update_N() system.  (#3 has the "advantage" that we might be  
>> able
>> to automatically update from one version to the next, but it could
>> also be very complicated.)  Perhaps hook_schema_N() and
>> hook_update_N() should be tied together in some way so that the new
>> schema and the upgrade path to get to it from the previous one are
>> always specified together.
>>
>
> Have you considered querying the database to check what fields are
> already there and add the missing ones based on the latest schema?
>
> The problem is what to do when a field changes type / name between two
> versions of the schema. But does it happen often?
>
> This would make it very easy for module developpers : simply add the
> field in the schema, and the schema api take cares of adding the
> required fields. More complex operations could be handled with #1. We
> did this with our cms, and it worked great. (this way you have schema
> versioned like code in cvs). I would not touch the fields found in the
> DB and not found in the schema, just in case :-)
>
> Philippe
>
>
>> Barry
>>
>>