no-rename-column

Reports a renamed column, which breaks the previous version of the application while a deploy is in progress.

Category	Default severity	Databases
deploy-safety	error	PostgreSQL, MySQL

What happens

RENAME COLUMN is quick, but it changes the name immediately. During a rolling deploy, instances of the previous version keep running for a while and still use the old name, so every query that touches the column fails until they are replaced.

The rule covers RENAME COLUMN, MySQL CHANGE with a new name, queryRunner.renameColumn(), and queryRunner.changeColumn() that changes the name.

Bad

import { MigrationInterface, QueryRunner } from 'typeorm'

export class RenameUserFullName1727200000000 implements MigrationInterface {
  public async up(queryRunner: QueryRunner): Promise<void> {
    await queryRunner.query(`ALTER TABLE "users" RENAME COLUMN "fullName" TO "displayName"`)
  }

  public async down(queryRunner: QueryRunner): Promise<void> {
    // ...
  }
}

Safe

If only the property name should change, keep the column name and skip the migration:

@Column({ name: 'fullName' })
displayName: string

To really rename the column, use expand and contract across releases: add the new column, write to both, backfill, switch reads to the new column, and drop the old one later.

When to suppress

When no running code uses the column, or when you deploy with downtime so old and new code never run at the same time.

// preflight safety-assured no-rename-column -- column only read by the nightly job, which is paused during deploy

References

• PostgreSQL: ALTER TABLE, RENAME
• MySQL: ALTER TABLE, renaming, redefining, and reordering columns
• TypeORM: @Column options, name