One way to use Rails Migrations for things other than db:migrate

maintenance_migrator.rb

# This stuff is from a Rails 2 app, but I don't think *too* much has changed in 3.0

class MaintenanceMigrator < ActiveRecord::Migrator
  def self.schema_migrations_table_name
   "#{super}_maintenance"
  end
end

# To Run
MaintenanceMigrator.migrate("db/maintenance/")
MaintenanceMigrator.migrate("db/maintenance/", '20111001173645')
MaintenanceMigrator.run(:up, "db/maintenance/")
MaintenanceMigrator.run(:down, "db/maintenance/", '20110501173645')

# And a generator
class MaintenanceGenerator < Rails::Generator::NamedBase  
  def manifest
    record do |m|
      m.migration_template 'migration.rb', 'db/maintenance', :assigns => get_local_assigns
    end
  end

  
  private  
    def get_local_assigns
      returning(assigns = {}) do
        if class_name.underscore =~ /^(add|remove)_.*_(?:to|from)_(.*)/
          assigns[:migration_action] = $1
          assigns[:table_name]       = $2.pluralize
        else
          assigns[:attributes] = []
        end
      end
    end
end