letsencrypt / letsencrypt/boulder

database: Improve our approach to migrations that add or remove columns

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area/sa kind/cleanup layer/storage
Dominant language
Go
Stars
5.8k
Forks
649
Avg merge
3d 23h
Merged PRs (30d)
24

Description

Our approach to migrations that add or remove columns is documented at https://github.com/letsencrypt/boulder/blob/master/docs/CONTRIBUTING.md#gating-migrations. Right now that process isn't doing a good enough job ensuring the correctness of our code, as evidenced by https://github.com/letsencrypt/boulder/pull/4880. We should come up with an alternate way to approach the problem that has more built-in protections.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reading the gating migrations section in docs/CONTRIBUTING.md and reviewing pull request 4880 to understand the current process and the failure it allowed. Trace the relevant migration workflow and identify an alternate approach with stronger correctness protections; done means the proposed approach is agreed upon and its implementation scope is clear.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
go
Domain
databases
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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