Migrations: why they all live in one folder and use no raw SQL

Migrations used to be scattered across fourteen folders inside the modules. Half of them never ran at all: only an active module picked them up, and an inactive one left its tables unreliable.

Schema::table("orders", function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->timestamp("stock_returned_at")->nullable();
});

They are written with the schema builder rather than a raw query: production runs on PostgreSQL, while the tests run on SQLite for speed. A query written for one database will fall over on the other — and it will be noticed at the worst possible moment.