Removing a null constraint can lead to race conditions with migrations

[Josh Smeaton]

I think a race condition exists when removing a null constraint that doesn't contain a default. This discussion started with regards to #23609. The flow here was changing a column from having a null to having a default:

IntegerField(null=True) -> IntegerField(default=42)

And the race condition:

• Deploy migration
• Update App Server 1 code
• App Server 2 tries to write to the table, and gets a write error (since it doesn't yet have the default in its models file)
• Update App Server 2 code

For a write heavy table, this could result in many failed writes.

I think we should be clear, and document, that removing a null on a column should always be done in two steps:

1. Add a default to the column. Deploy migration. Deploy app code.
2. Remove the null and the default from the column. Deploy migration. Deploy app code.

Perhaps there could be a check that ensures that removing a null always requires an existing default to exist.

[Loic Bistuer]

There are many cases where old app code won't work after a migration applied (e.g. adding a new column with NOT NULL, removing a column, etc.). I reckon we should just document that people are expected to run the new app code right after applying a migration.

There are certainly ways around it, but it's important people understand that nothing special is done at the framework level.

[Jacob Walls]

​PR

[Mariusz Felisiak]

A short note is not enough to explain it without creating confusion. On the other hand I don't think we want to create an extra section for this.

[Simon Charette]

FWIW I've been working on a third-party application that resolves this problem by introducing a concept of pre- and post-deployment migrations. We've been using it in production for a few months now.

It has a built-in notion of quorum which allows the following sequence of operation to be taken across multiple instances (e.g. multiple k8s clusters)

1. Run the migrate --pre-deploy command to alter the column to have it NULL SET DEFAULT 42
2. Wait for the N clusters to have completed their application rollout
3. Run the migrate command to have it NOT NULL and DROP DEFAULT

I created ​an issue to add support for this particular case as null constraint removal is not explicitly tested but it should only be matter of adjusting the auto-detector to have a IntegerField(null=True) -> IntegerField(default=42) change generate an extra PreAlterField operation meant to run on migrate --pre-deploy.