Ask HN: Would you use an auto-migration ORM for Android apps?
Hey everyone — I’m exploring an idea and want honest feedback from Android devs.
I’ve been working on Android apps where handling Room/SQLite migrations is painful:
- Writing and maintaining Migration(x, y) classes every release
- Debugging weird “missing column” crashes on old users
- Keeping schema history consistent across multiple devs or release tracks
- Testing N→latest migrations in CI
In backend systems (Go + Ent, Prisma, Flyway, etc.), this is solved by automated, versioned migrations with deterministic checks.
But on Android, everything happens locally on each device — so the tooling is messy.
I’m considering building a tool / Gradle plugin that would:
- Auto-detect schema changes from your models
- Generate safe migration SQL (with rollback + dry-run simulation)
- Validate migrations in CI/CD
- Optionally visualize schema evolution over time
- Integrate directly with Room or SQLDelight
Basically: “Prisma-style migrations for Android.”
I’d love your thoughts:
- Does your team still hand-write migrations?
- Would this actually save you time or is Room good enough now?
- Would you pay (or convince your manager to pay) for a Pro version that integrates with CI and shows visual diffs?
- What’s your biggest migration headache?
I’m just validating the pain before building an MVP — any feedback, criticism, or examples from your workflow would really help. Thanks