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One ALTER TABLE against production. Every request started timing out.
What you'll have at the end
A schema change shipped live with the app staying responsive throughout
You need
A Postgres table taking live production traffic, with one column running low on room and every existing row's value still needing to land in a wider replacement.
Not covered
Adding a brand new required column that never held any data before; that case skips the rewrite this recipe exists to avoid entirely.
Leans on
Add a required column to a live table without locking it
go there instead if you're adding a brand new required column rather than widening one that already exists; that case skips the rewrite this recipe exists to avoid.
Roll back a bad deploy in minutes instead of hours
go there if the swap step itself needs to be undone after the fact; this recipe only covers running the migration forward safely.
Get error tracking running before your first crash in production goes unnoticed
go there first if the only reason you found out about an outage like this one was a customer complaining.
Checked 25 Aug 2026
Part of the Full-Stack Application Deployment cookbook