CLI: managing the database schema

VersionGate’s database schema is applied and inspected with the versiongate CLI’s migrate subcommands — never automatically by the server binary (see Installation). This assumes the CLI is already installed and pointed at your database; see CLI bootstrap if you haven’t done that yet.

export VERSIONGATE_DATABASE_DSN="postgres://versiongate:versiongate@localhost:5432/versiongate?sslmode=disable"

versiongate migrate up

Applies all pending migrations.

versiongate migrate up
# migrations applied

Safe to run any number of times: if every migration is already applied, it’s a no-op, not an error.

versiongate migrate status

Shows every known migration and whether it’s been applied.

versiongate migrate status
# 00001_create_core_schema.sql   pending

After migrate up, the same command shows when it was applied:

versiongate migrate status
# 00001_create_core_schema.sql   applied at 2026-01-01 00:00:00 +0000 UTC

versiongate migrate down

Rolls back only the single most recently applied migration — not every migration, and not to a specific version.

versiongate migrate down
# last migration rolled back

Running migrate status afterward shows that migration as pending again.

Current schema

There is currently one migration (00001_create_core_schema.sql), covering Projects, Applications, Releases, and API Tokens. As the schema evolves, new migration files are added — migrate up always applies whatever is pending, so the commands above don’t change as that happens.