# sqldef

9 Hacker News commenters recommended sqldef and 5 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 1 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Idempotent schema diff tool supporting MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite; critics report PostgreSQL parse failures and mishandled SQLite column changes.

## Why people recommend it

- Diff-style schema migrations (2 comments): "It is like a diff tool but to advance the schema." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46893557)) "This looks really cool for schema migrations" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46896055))

## What people warn about

- Mishandles column changes in SQLite (2 comments): "it doesn't handle dropping columns well in sqlite" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46902457)) "I renamed a column and it added a new one." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46895034))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Atlas by Ariga](https://hackerapproved.com/p/atlas.md): 29 recommend
- [Alembic](https://hackerapproved.com/p/alembic.md): 5 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "sqldef", https://hackerapproved.com/p/sqldef/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).