Liquibase Runner

A VS Code extension that provides a UI for managing Liquibase database migrations in Java projects — no terminal required.

Features

• Sidebar tree view — detects Liquibase projects in your workspace and displays changelogs and changesets
• Run commands via right-click — Update, Status, Validate, Rollback, Generate Changelog, Diff
• Live dashboard panel — streams command output in real time with Output / Status / Diff tabs and clearer command state
• Cancel in-flight commands — abort long-running operations from the panel
• Auto-detects build tool — Maven, Gradle, or standalone Liquibase CLI, with no manual configuration required
• File watching — tree refreshes automatically when changelog files change on disk

Requirements

Your project must use one of the following:

• Maven — pom.xml referencing liquibase (e.g. spring-boot-starter-liquibase)
• Gradle — build.gradle referencing liquibase
• Standalone CLI — liquibase binary available on your PATH

Java and the build tool must be installed and accessible from your terminal.

Setup

Maven projects

Add the Liquibase Maven plugin to your pom.xml. Spring Boot projects using spring-boot-starter-liquibase still need the plugin to run commands from this extension:

<build>
  <plugins>
    <plugin>
      <groupId>org.liquibase</groupId>
      <artifactId>liquibase-maven-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>4.28.0</version>
      <configuration>
        <propertyFile>liquibase.properties</propertyFile>
      </configuration>
      <dependencies>
        <!-- Required for PostgreSQL; swap for your driver -->
        <dependency>
         <groupId>org.liquibase.ext</groupId>
         <artifactId>liquibase-hibernate6</artifactId>
          <version>${liquibase.version}</version>
      </dependency>
      <dependency>
         <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
         <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
        <version>4.0.6</version>
      </dependency>
      <dependency>
        <groupId>jakarta.persistence</groupId>
        <artifactId>jakarta.persistence-api</artifactId>
        <version>3.2.0</version>
      </dependency>
      <dependency>
        <groupId>jakarta.validation</groupId>
        <artifactId>jakarta.validation-api</artifactId>
        <version>3.1.1</version>
      </dependency>
      <dependency>
        <groupId>org.jboss.logging</groupId>
        <artifactId>jboss-logging</artifactId>
        <version>3.6.3.Final</version>
      </dependency>
      </dependencies>
    </plugin>
  </plugins>
</build>

Note: Match the plugin version to the Liquibase version used by your Spring Boot starter. Check the effective BOM version with mvn dependency:tree | grep liquibase.

Gradle projects

Add the plugin to build.gradle:

plugins {
  id 'org.liquibase.gradle' version '2.2.2'
}

dependencies {
  liquibaseRuntime 'org.liquibase:liquibase-core:4.28.0'
  liquibaseRuntime 'org.postgresql:postgresql:42.7.3'
}

liquibase {
  activities {
    main {
      changeLogFile 'src/main/resources/db/changelog/db.changelog-master.yaml'
      url           System.getenv('SPRING_DATASOURCE_URL') ?: 'jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/mydb'
      username      System.getenv('SPRING_DATASOURCE_USERNAME') ?: 'postgres'
      password      System.getenv('SPRING_DATASOURCE_PASSWORD') ?: 'postgres'
    }
  }
}

liquibase.properties

Place this file at the project root. The extension reads it to locate the changelog and database connection:

changeLogFile=src/main/resources/db/changelog/db.changelog-master.yaml
url=jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/mydb
username=postgres
password=postgres
driver=org.postgresql.Driver

# Optional — used by diff and diffChangelog commands
referenceUrl=jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/mydb_reference
referenceUsername=postgres
referencePassword=postgres

Tip: Avoid committing passwords. Use environment variable placeholders (${DB_PASSWORD}) and set them in your shell or a .env loader.

Contexts and labels (Liquibase 4.24+)

Liquibase 4.24 renamed the filter parameters. This extension uses the current names:

If you are on a version older than 4.24, contexts still work but the labels field will have no effect — upgrade the plugin or pass labels via liquibase.properties.

Getting Started

1. Open a workspace containing a Java project with Liquibase
2. The extension auto-activates when it detects liquibase.properties or a master changelog file
3. Click the Liquibase icon in the activity bar to open the project tree
4. Right-click a project node to run commands

Extension Settings

Commands

All commands are available from the command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) and the tree view context menu.

Known Issues

• The status command output parser expects Liquibase's default format (file::id::author lines). Custom log formats may not populate the Status tab.
• generateChangelog now prompts for an output file so it can write to a new changelog instead of the master file.
• The entity-based generation flow uses Liquibase's generation/diff functionality with a Hibernate/Spring reference URL. It compares the entity model exposed through Hibernate to the database; it does not inspect JPA annotations directly.

Release Notes

0.0.1

Initial release — sidebar tree view, webview output panel, Maven/Gradle/CLI support, full command set.