{"id":48985,"date":"2025-08-20T17:16:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T21:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=48985"},"modified":"2025-10-04T12:13:40","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T16:13:40","slug":"base-3-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/20\/base-3-0\/","title":{"rendered":"Base 3.0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/menial.co.uk\/blog\/2025\/08\/16\/base-3.0-released\/\">Menial<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/menial.co.uk\/blog\/2025\/08\/16\/base-3.0-released\/\">\n<p>The app has had a major overhaul to all areas while keeping a familiar UI.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Highlights of this version include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Working with multiple attached databases<\/li>\n<li>Support for more SQLite features like:\n<ul>\n<li><code>WITHOUT ROWID<\/code> &amp; <code>STRICT<\/code> tables<\/li>\n<li>Partial indexes (with <code>WHERE<\/code> clauses)<\/li>\n<li>Named table constraints<\/li>\n<li>Generated columns<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Better syntax highlighting &amp; autocomplete in the SQL editor<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>There are a bunch of these Mac SQLite apps, and <a href=\"https:\/\/menial.co.uk\/base\/\">Base<\/a> is my favorite. I was worried that it was abandoned, as it didn&rsquo;t seem to be getting many updates, and I was hitting some errors and UI glitches on newer versions of macOS. These seem to be fixed in 3.0. It&rsquo;s $40.66 direct or $36 in the Mac App Store, with no upgrade pricing.<\/p>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/11\/22\/ducklet-1-0-1\/\">Ducklet 1.0.1<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/15\/core-data-lab-2-4-beta\/\">Core Data Lab 2.4 Beta<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/13\/indispensable-developer-tools\/\">Indispensable Developer Tools<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"base-3-0-update-2025-10-04\">Update (<a href=\"#base-3-0-update-2025-10-04\">2025-10-04<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/menial.co.uk\/blog\/2025\/09\/29\/retrospective-on-making-base-3\/\">Menial<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/menial.co.uk\/blog\/2025\/09\/29\/retrospective-on-making-base-3\/\">\n<p>In mid-2020, the codebase for Base was struggling a bit. It was mostly Objective-C (which I still\nlove) with some tentative Swift adoption dotted here and there. Any individual unit of code wasn&rsquo;t\ntoo bad, but the whole was a bit tangled and causing headaches for making larger changes.<\/p>\n<p>So I decided a clean slate was needed.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>All of those shortcuts and gnarly corners had accumulated over 12 years. Yes, I knew why they were there and wouldn&rsquo;t have to spend time rediscovering old problems, but I would still have to carefully preserve their behaviours in any new systems and ensure nothing was lost in translation. And that takes time.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>I decided to adopt SwiftUI in 2020. This was, in retrospect, optimistic at best.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>More than once I had a choice to either accept an easy or quick solution with a compromise, or do it the hard way and try for a better result. Apparently my default is to choose the hard way - it requires active mental effort to take an easier, but &ldquo;less ideal&rdquo; route.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In 2023, a reset and a much simpler plan:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/menial.co.uk\/blog\/2025\/09\/29\/retrospective-on-making-base-3\/\">\n<p>No sweeping architectural changes. No adopting of the latest frameworks. Just a methodical, mechanical translation of working code into a more modern language, with some tidying as we go.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Spolsky was absolutely right and my circumstances weren&rsquo;t as different as I thought.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Menial: The app has had a major overhaul to all areas while keeping a familiar UI. [&#8230;] Highlights of this version include: Working with multiple attached databases Support for more SQLite features like: WITHOUT ROWID &amp; STRICT tables Partial indexes (with WHERE clauses) Named table constraints Generated columns Better syntax highlighting &amp; autocomplete in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2025-08-20T21:16:12Z","apple_news_api_id":"92e3921c-5e22-41c4-961b-7f272e85ef2d","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2025-10-04T16:13:43Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AkuOSHF4iQcSWG38nLoXvLQ","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2467,143,75,30,32,2598,2074,425,901,1812],"class_list":["post-48985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-base","tag-database","tag-developertool","tag-mac","tag-macapp","tag-macos-15-sequoia","tag-software-rewrite","tag-sqlite","tag-swift-programming-language","tag-swiftui"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48985"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49511,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48985\/revisions\/49511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}