github/gh-ost

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

13540 stars · 1416 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

gh-ost is GitHub's triggerless online schema migration tool for MySQL. It copies tables to a ghost table while streaming binary log changes asynchronously, enabling pausable, throttled, and auditable migrations with minimal load on the master.

Use cases

• run online schema migrations on mysql without locking tables
• add or drop columns on large mysql tables with zero downtime
• migrate a mysql table schema without triggers
• throttle or pause a live table migration on a busy master
• test schema migrations safely on a replica before running on production
• change table indexes on high-traffic mysql databases

When to choose

• you need zero-downtime schema changes on large, busy MySQL tables
• you want a migration tool that avoids triggers and their overhead
• you need fine-grained control: pause, throttle, and dynamically reconfigure migrations
• you want to validate migrations on replicas before applying them to masters

When to avoid

• you use a database other than MySQL
• your tables are small enough that a simple ALTER TABLE is acceptable
• you cannot access the binary log stream or replicas
• you need migrations for non-table objects like stored procedures

Facets

cli-tool · maturity active

database deployment cli databases developer-tools go cli mysql schema-migration online-schema-change triggerless binlog database-migrations devops linux macos

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="github/gh-ost")