Alembic Migration Checker: The Essential CI/CD Toolkit for Flask Apps

[DevGlitch]

👋 Hello Flask-Migrate Community,

I'm excited to introduce a GitHub Action I've developed, Alembic Migration Checker, tailored to enhance database schema management within CI/CD pipelines for Flask applications that uses Alembic. This action automates checks between the latest Alembic migration script and the current database state, alerting you to any discrepancies. It's designed as an essential tool for preventing migration conflicts and ensuring smooth deployments, perfect for Flask projects that utilize Flask-Migrate for managing database migrations.

Features:

• Broad Database Support: Works with PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQLite.
• Multi-Pending Migrations: Seamlessly handles multiple pending migrations.
• Detailed Exit Statuses: Offers clear insights into your database schema's alignment with migration scripts.
• CI/CD Integration: Designed for easy integration into existing workflows.

How It Works:

By integrating this action into your workflows, you can automate checks for pending migrations, ensuring your database schema is always up to date with your Alembic migrations directory.

Recommended Use Cases:

• Pull Requests: Validate new migrations against the existing database schema to avoid conflicts and simplify code review.
• Deployment: Workflows: Ensure the database schema aligns with the repository's migration scripts before deployment.

This action is not just a tool but a step towards more reliable and manageable database migrations for anyone using Alembic in their development pipeline. I warmly invite the community to try it out, share your feedback, and contribute to its development. Whether you have ideas for new features, improvements, or questions, I'm all ears.

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Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and experiences!

Cheers,
DevGlitch

[miguelgrinberg]

Thanks for sharing. Unfortunately I have to recommend users of flask-migrate to not use this action.

The action requires the developer to share their database credentials, and this is a risk. Chances are you have good intentions, but as a matter of security it is a very bad idea to share credentials and secrets with third parties.

[DevGlitch]

@miguelgrinberg, I appreciate your vigilance on security, and it's important to clarify how Alembic Migration Checker handles database credentials securely, aligning with best practices and using the same secure methods as Flask-Migrate and other database operations within the SQLAlchemy ecosystem.

• Security by Design: The action runs entirely within the user's GitHub Actions environment. It doesn't transmit database credentials or any sensitive information to external parties. Credentials are used exclusively to establish a secure connection to the user's own database from within their GitHub Actions runner, which is a controlled and secure environment.

• GitHub Secrets: Similar to Flask-Migrate, this GitHub Action uses database credentials stored in GitHub Secrets. GitHub encrypts these secrets, making them available only to GitHub Actions runners and not accessible in the logs or to the action's developers. This approach follows GitHub's best practices for handling sensitive information.

• SQLAlchemy for Secure Connections: The action leverages SQLAlchemy for database connections, which is a part of the Alembic ecosystem and widely used for its robust security features. SQLAlchemy doesn't expose credentials in connections or logs when used correctly, ensuring that the database interactions remain secure.

• Open Source Transparency: The entire codebase of the Alembic Migration Checker is open source, allowing for full transparency and community oversight. Users and security experts can review the code to verify its safety and adherence to security standards.

My commitment is to provide a tool that enhances workflow efficiency without compromising security. I encourage users to review the action's source code and documentation to understand its operation and security measures fully.

For additional peace of mind, I recommend implementing additional security best practices, such as using dedicated database users with limited read permissions specifically for CI/CD operations, further minimizing any potential risk.

[miguelgrinberg]

As I said above, my advice for flask-migrate users is to not use this GitHub action, or actually any other action that is not widely used and/or from well known organizations.