Real root cause behind MrGabri's fresh-Postgres install crash, surfaced
by his second log dump after #488 silenced the FATAL noise:
Initial setup failed: error: alter table "events" add constraint
"events_hero_photo_id_foreign" foreign key ("hero_photo_id")
references "photos" ("id") on delete SET NULL
- relation "photos" does not exist
initializeDatabase() in src/database/db.js declared the FK inline at
events createTable (line 89), but the photos table is created later
in the same function (line 203). On Postgres this is a hard error —
the referenced table must exist at FK-declaration time. SQLite
silently tolerated it because its FK enforcement is lazy and the
inline declaration just became a column with no FK metadata.
Why no existing Postgres install hit it: initializeDatabase only
runs the createTable block on `if (!hasEventsTable)`. Once a
deployment has the events table from any prior run, the path is
skipped. So the bug only ever fires on a truly fresh Postgres
install — which is exactly MrGabri's scenario, and which our smoke
suite never exercises (it runs against a long-lived dev stack).
Fix:
- events createTable: drop the inline FK; column declared as a plain
integer with an explainer comment.
- After both tables exist (post photos createTable): db.schema
.alterTable('events').foreign('hero_photo_id').references...
Wrapped in a try/catch that swallows "already exists" so re-runs
on installs that previously got into a half-state don't fail boot.
Verified by docker compose down -v + up against the dev stack — no
FK error, all migrations apply, FK present in pg_constraint with
the expected definition.
Paul Nothaft
87834a7fff