Rails: Alter migrations during early development phases

Question

During the very early phases of development in a Rails app, I prefer to modify the migrations files directly to add new columns (fields) to my tables (models) instead of piling

Answer 1

I recommend using fixtures when taking this approach (as it allows quickly recreating sample data for the application after dropping the database to recreate). Another option is http://datamapper.org/ (does not require migrations).