changelogSyncToTag command

The changelogSyncToTag command marks all undeployed changesets from your changelog up to the specified tag as executed in your database. The command also marks the changeset with that tag as deployed.

Note: If you don’t have any tag specified in your changelog file, add it by using the tagDatabase Change Type as follows:

<changeSet id="13.1" author="liquibase">
<tagDatabase tag="version_2.0"/>
</changeSet>

Uses

The changelogSyncToTag command is typically used when you want to baseline a new database environment with specific objects. An example use case for the changelogSyncToTag command is the following:

1. You have a DEV environment with a set of objects used only in DEV, and you want to use the same changelog to manage a new TEST environment. The TEST environment does not have those DEV-only objects and needs only some of them.
2. To deploy the needed DEV-only objects and avoid deploying the rest, you add a tag and run the changelogSyncToTag command to mark the changes related to that tag as executed in the DATABASECHANGELOG table.
3. The command marks all changesets starting with the first changeset at the top of the DEV changelog file and moving down to the changesets up to and including the tag.
4. Next, you deploy the changesets that were not marked as deployed in your database. Liquibase treats your DEV and TEST databases as equivalent.

Note: If you want to mark all undeployed changes from the changelog file as executed in your database, use the changelogSync command.

You can also use the changelogSyncToTag command to mark the change associated with a specific tag as executed if the object associated with the change was created manually on the database. By marking the changeset as executed, it prevents the next Liquibase update from failing as it tries to create an object that already exists.

Running the changelogSyncToTag command

Before running the changelogSyncToTag command, you can specify the driver, classpath, and URL in your liquibase.properties file. For more information, see Creating and configuring a liquibase.properties file. You can also specify these properties in your command line.

Next, run the changelogSyncToTag command:

liquibase --changelogFile=mychangelog.xml changelogSyncToTag version1

Note: Enter the name of the changelog and the tag that you want to use in place of mychangelog.xml and version1.

changelogSyncToTag global attributes

Attribute	Definition	Requirements
--changeLogFile	The root changelog	Required
--url	The JDBC database connection URL	Required
--username*	The database username	Required*
--password*	The database password	Required*

Note: The username and password attributes are not required for connections and systems which use alternate means of authentication.

changelogSyncToTag command attributes

Attribute	Definition	Requirements
tag	The tag you can add to changesets to determine which changesets in the changelog to evaluate based on their tags.	Required

changelogSyncToTag example output

When successful, the changelogSyncToTag command produces the following output:

Liquibase Pro 4.3.2 by Datical licensed to support until Wed Sep 22 23:59:59 CDT 2021
####################################################
##   _     _             _ _                      ##
##  | |   (_)           (_) |                     ##
##  | |    _  __ _ _   _ _| |__   __ _ ___  ___   ##
##  | |   | |/ _` | | | | | '_ \ / _` / __|/ _ \  ##
##  | |___| | (_| | |_| | | |_) | (_| \__ \  __/  ##
##  \_____/_|\__, |\__,_|_|_.__/ \__,_|___/\___|  ##
##              | |                               ##
##              |_|                               ##
##                                                ##
##  Get documentation at docs.liquibase.com       ##
##  Get certified courses at learn.liquibase.com  ##
##  Free schema change activity reports at        ##
##      https://hub.liquibase.com                 ##
##                                                ##
####################################################
Starting Liquibase at 11:08:28 (version 4.3.2 #44 built at 2021-03-23 14:01+0000)
Liquibase command 'changelogSyncToTag' was executed successfully.