Grails database migration plugin updateOnStart is not working - grails

Question

I need some help here. I have configured database migration plugin as the documentation says:
grails.plugin.databasemigration.updateOnStart = true
grails.plugin.databasemigration.updateOnStartFileNames = ['changelog.groovy']
This works fine when running 'grails run-app'. My database is migrated as expected, but how would I get this behavior when deploy my 'grails war' artifact?
I have tested it on tomcat, by manually copying the artifact to tomcat/webapps folder, but during deployment, hibernate complains about missing columns (the one that should have been created by the database migration plugin).
Any ideas?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Are you sure that those two lines of code are available in production environment too?
This is an example of what I normally do in my applications:
environments {
development {
grails.plugin.databasemigration.updateOnStart = true
grails.plugin.databasemigration.updateOnStartFileNames = ['changelog.groovy']
// ... other useful development settings
}
test {
grails.plugin.databasemigration.updateOnStart = true
grails.plugin.databasemigration.autoMigrateScripts = ['RunApp','TestApp']
grails.plugin.databasemigration.forceAutoMigrate = true
grails.plugin.databasemigration.dropOnStart = true
if (loadTestData) {
grails.plugin.databasemigration.updateOnStartFileNames = ['testchangelog.groovy', 'testdata.groovy']
} else {
grails.plugin.databasemigration.updateOnStartFileNames = ['testchangelog.groovy']
// ... something test-related
}
}
production {
grails.plugin.databasemigration.updateOnStart = true
grails.plugin.databasemigration.updateOnStartFileNames = ['changelog.groovy']
// ... production config settings
}
}
Also, be sure to comment out relevant dbCreate entries in DataSource.groovy to avoid issues with migrations.

Answer 2

See this answer to a similar question https://stackoverflow.com/a/25053160/3939511
I find that the default value for grails.plugin.databasemigration.changelogLocation at compile time is correct to have your change-logs included in the production war. I.e. I don't set/change this property in Config.groovy at compile time.
But in deployment I set grails.plugin.databasemigration.changelogLocation = 'migrations', as the change-logs end up in WEB-INF/classes/migrations/ (as groovy scripts, not compiled classes).

Answer 3

I believe if you do a dbm-update that create the patches for you in the destination database.
Grabbed this from the Grails site.
http://grails-plugins.github.io/grails-database-migration/docs/manual/ref/Update%20Scripts/dbm-update.html
dbm-update
Purpose
Updates a database to the current version.
Description
Runs all un-run changeSets from the changelog. Executes against the database configured in DataSource.groovy for the current environment (defaults to dev).
Usage: