This makes no sense. Who's more capable of keeping a solution for this developed, tested, and up-to-date, the core developers of the database or a third party that's probably hoping to achieve something other than a migration tool?
It's worth noting that it's not like rewriting the whole table is a solution to this that's unique to SQLite. MySQL's two main table types also do this in order to alter a table in certain (very common) ways. But they don't make you do it yourself, because it's deceptively difficult to do it right.
Look at the issue a different way. What functionality needs to be removed from SQLite in order to add more comprehensive alter table? SQLite is defined by being "lite" and that involves a lot of saying "no". You can use other database solutions.
SQLite is also public domain. You can cause this code to be written and have complete freedom to redistribute/keep private as you see fit.
So what is actually being demanded here is that the SQLite core developers spend their time on the feature. SQLite used to have no table altering functionality at all. The ability to append a column (which had few technical risks or ambiguity) was paid for by AOL.
Yep, and I said in the article that I'd be happy to pay for adding other ALTER TABLE methods... if someone ran a funding campaign, I'd donate quite a bit of money. I still suspect that if such a campagign was run, we'd see a good set of money come in from the community for it.
It's worth noting that it's not like rewriting the whole table is a solution to this that's unique to SQLite. MySQL's two main table types also do this in order to alter a table in certain (very common) ways. But they don't make you do it yourself, because it's deceptively difficult to do it right.