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gh-ost: GitHub's online schema migration tool for MySQL

Blog post from GitHub

Post Details
Company
Date Published
Author
Shlomi Noach
Word Count
2,793
Language
English
Hacker News Points
-
Summary

GitHub has released gh-ost, an open-source, triggerless online schema migration tool for MySQL, designed to address the challenges of continuous database changes in production environments. Unlike existing tools that rely on triggers, gh-ost intercepts changes via binary logs, offering a lightweight, pauseable, and dynamically controllable solution that minimizes operational overhead and user impact. It allows for schema changes without the typical complications of lock contention or replication lag, providing features for real-time control and comprehensive auditing. Additionally, gh-ost supports various operation modes, including testing migrations on replicas, ensuring data integrity before applying changes to the master database. Released under the MIT license, gh-ost is actively maintained by GitHub's database infrastructure engineering team and invites community contributions for further improvements.