[prirun]

SQLite has transactional DDL: you can start a transaction, do a bunch of create tables, copy data from old tables into the new tables. If an error occurs during this and a rollback occurs, everything will be just like it was before the transaction started. If a commit occurs, the migration succeeds and everyone sees the new schema on their next transaction.

In rollback mode, only the migration thread can be active because it's a write transaction, but I'm guessing in WAL mode, readers can continue to read during the migration, as with any other write transaction. I don't use WAL mode much because for my application (HashBackup), I don't need db concurrency.

[ForHackernews]

If you can accept downtime and you really don't need db concurrency, then that's great and SQLite is probably a good fit for you. There are many applications for which that isn't the case.