First attempt to force migration of the tables even with migrate option set to false.

gluon/shell.py

@@ -214,7 +214,8 @@ def run(
     bpython=False,
     python_code=None,
     cronjob=False,
-    scheduler_job=False):
+    scheduler_job=False,
+    force_migrate=False):
     """
     Start interactive shell or run Python script (startfile) in web2py
     controller environment. appname is formatted like:
@@ -244,6 +245,19 @@ def run(
             os.mkdir(adir)
             fileutils.create_app(adir)
 
+    if force_migrate:
+        import_models = True
+        from gluon.dal import DAL
+        orig_init = DAL.__init__
+
+        def custom_init(*args, **kwargs):
+            kwargs['migrate'] = True
+            logger.info('Forcing migrate=True')
+            orig_init(*args, **kwargs)
+
+        DAL.__init__ = custom_init
+        logger.debug('Custom init should not have been called already')
+
     if c:
         import_models = True
     extra_request = {}

gluon/widget.py

@@ -839,6 +839,13 @@ web2py will attempt to run a GUI to ask for it when starting the web server
         'collect coverage data when used with --run_system_tests; ' \
         'require Python 2.7+ and the coverage module installed')
 
+    parser.add_option('--force_migrate',
+                      default=False,
+                      action='store_true',
+                      help= \
+                          'force DAL to migrate all tables that should be migrated when enabled; ' \
+                          'monkeypatch in the DAL class to force _migrate_enabled=True')
+
     if '-A' in sys.argv:
         k = sys.argv.index('-A')
     elif '--args' in sys.argv:
@@ -1037,7 +1044,7 @@ def start():
         sys.argv = [options.run] + options.args
         run(options.shell, plain=options.plain, bpython=options.bpython,
             import_models=options.import_models, startfile=options.run,
-            cronjob=options.cronjob)
+            cronjob=options.cronjob, force_migrate=options.force_migrate)
         return
 
     if options.extcron: