bikeshedder

tusker

Rust2022–2025

bikeshedder / tusker

tusker

PostgreSQL schema diffing, migration running, and type-safe queries.

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REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

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What it is

PostgreSQL schema diffing, migration running, and type-safe queries.

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Where it is used

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What people are saying

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Also in these discussions

blainehansen/postgres_migrator · linked in 3 of the same discussions
djrobstep/migra · linked in 3 of the same discussions
sqldef/sqldef · linked in 3 of the same discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year10 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2022-02-26 20:00:27 UTC to 2025-04-03 22:54:39 UTC.

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Period	Start (UTC)	End (exclusive, UTC)	Mentions	Submissions	Comments
2022	2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	4	1	3
2023	2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	3	0	3
2024	2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	1	0	1
2025	2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2	0	2

What Hacker News says

10 sources

evanelias·Apr 3, 2025

There are a few stand-alone declarative Postgres tools available, including Stripe's pg-schema-diff [1], Tusker [2] which wraps Migra [3], and sqldef [4] which supports multiple DBMS. For sake of completeness for users of other databases: for SQLite check out stb-tester's migrator [5], and last but not least for MySQL/MariaDB there's my tool Skeema [6]. [1] https://github.com/stripe/pg-schema-diff [2] https://github.com/bikeshedder/tusker [3] https://github.com/djrobstep/migra [4] https://github.com/sqldef/sqldef/ [5] https://david.rothlis.net/declarative-schema-migration-for-s... [6] https://github.com/skeema/skeema

In Declarative Schemas for simpler database management

perrygeo·Mar 29, 2025

In a similar vein, Tusker is helpful tool that diffs your declarative schema and auto-generates migrations. It uses live postgres connections so you can connect and diff against a running instance too, allowing you to sync up multiple instances. You still need something to run the migrations, but generating them is fully automated. https://github.com/bikeshedder/tusker

In Postgres Language Server: Initial Release

evanelias·Feb 2, 2024

Thanks! Yeah definitely agree that building out declarative table management for Postgres would be a major effort. A few open source projects I've seen in that area include: https://github.com/sqldef/sqldef (Go) https://github.com/bikeshedder/tusker (Python but being ported to Rust) https://github.com/tyrchen/renovate (Rust) https://github.com/blainehansen/postgres_migrator (Rust) Some of these are based on parsing SQL, and others are based on running the CREATEs in a temporary location and introspecting the result. The schema export side can be especially tricky for Postgres, since it lacks a built-in equivalent to MySQL's SHOW CREATE TABLE. So most of these declarative pg tools shell out to pg_dump, or require the user to do so. But sqldef actually implements CREATE TABLE dumping in pure Golang if I recall correctly, which is pretty coo

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l. There's also the question of implementing the table diff logic from scratch, vs shelling out to another tool or using a library. For the latter path, there's a nice blog post from Supabase about how they evaluated the various options: https://supabase.com/blog/supabase-cli#choosing-the-best-dif...

In We built our customer data warehouse all on Postgres

perrygeo·Dec 3, 2023

Big fan of tusker (https://github.com/bikeshedder/tusker) for PostgreSQL migrations. Tusker takes a SQL-first approach; You write your schema in declarative DDL (I have my entire project in one schema.sql file) and when you edit it, tusker generates the sql code required to migrate. It uses temporary test databases to run both your declarative DDL and your step-by-step migrations to ensure they are in lock step. And it can connect to live databases and diff your schema/migrations against reality. I've never seen a better toolkit for schema evolution.

In Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

nextaccountic·Oct 3, 2023

Forr postgres, how does the schema diffing aspect compare to migra? https://github.com/djrobstep/migra I'm asking because, although migra is excellent and there are multiple migrations tools based on it (at least https://github.com/bikeshedder/tusker and https://github.com/blainehansen/postgres_migrator), issues are piling up but development seem to be slowing down

In Pgroll: zero-downtime, reversible schema migrations for Postgres

nextaccountic·Jan 6, 2023

The best solution I've ever seen is this Rust library https://github.com/cornucopia-rs/cornucopia You write plain SQL for you schema (just a schema.sql is enough) and plain SQL functions for your queries. Then it generates Rust types and Rust functions from from that. If you don't use Rust, maybe there's a library like that for your favorite language. Optionally, pair it with https://github.com/bikeshedder/tusker or https://github.com/blainehansen/postgres_migrator (both are based off https://github.com/djrobstep/migra) to generate migrations by diffing your schema.sql files, and https://github.com/rust-db/refinery to perform those migrations. Now, if you have simple crud needs, you should probably use https://postgrest.org/en/stable/ and not an ORM. There are packages like https://www.npmjs.com/package/@supabase/postgrest-js (for JS / ty

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pescript) and probably for other languages too. If you insist on an ORM, the best of the bunch is prisma https://www.prisma.io/ - outside of the typescript/javascript ecosystem it has ports for some other languages (with varying degrees of completion), the one I know about is the Rust one https://prisma.brendonovich.dev/introduction

In Ask HN: ORM or Native SQL?

thunderbong·Feb 27, 2022Submission

Tusker: PostgreSQL Migration Management Tool

2 points · Open discussion

hackernewds·Feb 27, 2022

> Tusker actually uses Migra to power its functionality: https://github.com/bikeshedder/tusker#how-does-it-Work What a twist! Might we ask what field you work in? Seems niche

In Migra: Diff for PostgreSQL schemas

evanelias·Feb 26, 2022

I work heavily in this space and can add some more details :) Tusker actually uses Migra to power its functionality: https://github.com/bikeshedder/tusker#how-does-it-work Tusker's flow is somewhat similar to sqldef https://github.com/k0kubun/sqldef , although the internal mechanics are quite different. Migra/Tusker executes the SQL in a temporary location, introspects it, and diffs the introspected in-memory representation -- in other words, using the database directly as the canonical parser. In contrast, sqldef parses the SQL itself, builds an in-memory representation based on that, and then does the diff that way. I'm the author of Skeema https://www.skeema.io which provides a similar declarative workflow for MySQL and MariaDB schema changes. Skeema uses an execute-and-introspect approach similar to Migra/Tusker, although each object

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is split out into its own .sql file for easier management in version control, with a multi-level directory hierarchy if you have multiple database instances and multiple schemas. Skeema was conceptually inspired by Facebook's internal database schema change flow, as FB has used declarative schema management submission/review/execution company-wide for over a decade now. Skeema actually predates both Migra and sqldef slightly, although it did not influence them, all were developed separately. In turn, Prisma Migrate and Vitess/PlanetScale declarative migrations were directly inspired by Skeema's approach, paradigms, and/or even direct use of source code in Vitess's case. (Although they're finally moving to a parser-based approach instead, which I recommended they do over a year ago, as it makes more sense for their use-case -- their whole product inherently requires a thorough SQL parser anyway... and ironically, sqldef is based on the Vitess SQL parser!)

In Migra: Diff for PostgreSQL schemas

gavinray·Feb 26, 2022

This tool is incredibly useful I would also like to share a very similar tool that is much less known: https://github.com/bikeshedder/tusker It's the same thing, except instead of requiring two DB URL's to do the diffing, you give it a "schema.sql" file and a folder path that has your migrations in it, and the path to the current DB. Then it introspects the DB, looks at "schema.sql" + the migration files, and figures out what you've changed in "schema.sql" that isn't in your migrations yet and generates the diff as a new migration. Really amazing workflow. If you have trouble visualizing it, the workflow would be something like: 1. DB is empty, migrations empty, schema.sql has "CREATE TABLE todo (id int, description text);" 2. You run the diff, it generates a migration that contains the CREATE TABLE statement 3. You modify "

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schema.sql", maybe adding a new column like "boolean is_completed" to "todo" 4. You re-run the diff, it sees the DB has the table, the migration for the table is present, but a new column is added. So it generates an "ALTER TABLE .. ADD COLUMN .." migration. 5. Rinse, repeat.

In Migra: Diff for PostgreSQL schemas