rails migrations: handling naming conflicts

rake aborted!
Multiple migrations have the version number 119

If you work on any sizeable rails team, you’ve had someone check in a migration before you do. There’s a great timestamp-based solution by the folks at revolution on rails. That does seem to be pretty heavy-duty for a 2 person team though, so I have just been manually reverting migrations from console and the database shell.

So I decided to script it. Here is an automated rake task that handles my most common issue. I decided not to polish its rough edges, to let any ’standout candidates’ (TM) have a go at it (Standoutjobs is hiring). This task is barely tested; you probably shouldn’t use it unless you understand what it does. I’ll polish and test it later.