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 = {}