Rollbacks that really do nothing

Liquibase Development
1

I think a slightly different behavior would be a good idea.

The scenario I see is this:


  1. I execute a changeSet that inserts a row into a table.
  2. I have specified that the rollback for this changeSet is to do nothing as foreign key constraints etc. get in the way of simply deleting the data that has been inserted.
  3. When I perform a rollback, liquibase runs no sql (exactly as directed) it then removes the changeSet from the databaseChangeLog table.
  4. I run the update operation again (after fixing a failure in a different changeSet or other unrelated change). The update fails as I can not insert the same values a second time.

My point here is, I can not see a way in liquibase to actually do ‘nothing’ when rolling back. If I add an empty rollback tag then liquibase still forgets it has run the script even it it does not undo the changes made.

Obviously I can write complex blocks to check values before the statement is run or I can add a similarly complex pre-condition to cover this. But in some cases it would be much nicer if liquibase could actually do nothing when rolling back leaving the appropriate changeLog entries intact.


I understand that this leaves the database in a ‘third’ state that is niether updated or rolled back. I understand that this also means a difference in execution order when rolling forward again. But this is easier to take into account than the alternatives.


Any thoughts?