According to Simon Willison, sqlite-utils—a Python library and command-line tool for SQLite databases—reached version four-point-oh release candidate one this week. The major version bump brings two significant features: migrations for schema changes, and db dot atomic for managing nested transactions. Migrations are a port of Willison's earlier sqlite-migrate package, allowing developers to version control database schema changes. The db dot atomic method makes nested transactions easier to use in SQLite, similar to patterns in Django and Peewee. The release also includes backwards-incompatible changes: a new upsert syntax and dropped support for Python three-point-eight. Willison kept the migrations system deliberately simple—it doesn't provide reverse migrations, so developers must fix mistakes with new forward migrations. The earlier sqlite-migrate package has been battle-tested for years, giving confidence the design is stable.

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