The encoding is to follow PEP 263 http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0263/ It just makes sure all unicode literals embedded in the code are in UTF8. Everything I do is in UTF8 so it stops non UTF8 string slipping in to the code base and causing interesting and sometimes difficult to track down bugs.

#!/usr/bin/env python
# encoding: utf-8

/usr/bin/env? Why not just /usr/bin/python? Is this just a way of not having to explicitly specify the location of python, and have it pick it up from your $PATH?

The encoding line presumably relates to the source code that follows?

See the change list here http://code.google.com/p/sqlalchemy-migrate/wiki/ChangesSince0_4_4. I haven’t used this myself but I think it does what you want.

To manage code and database changes I version control the migrate repository in svn. So I can be sure that the code I update checkout syncs with upgrade scripts I am about to run.

1. I can see that this would work when upgrading the database one revision at a time, but if sqlalchemy-migrate applies multiple updates in sequence, you’d probably want a transaction around the whole sequence? (i.e. I reckon sqlalchemy-migrate should do the rollback management)

2. How do you manage updates that involve not just database changes, but also template & code changes? Is there a ‘turbogears-migrate’ that incorporates sqlalchemy-migrate?