Upgrading SQLcl Versions With a Symlink Script

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The habit I was trying to automate

SQLcl updates break things sometimes. Not often, but often enough that I stopped overwriting the last version every time a new one shipped.

For a while now my setup has looked like this:

Every version I download lives in its own folder under ~/Applications, named after its build number.
~/Applications/sqlcl-latest is a symlink pointing at whichever version is active.
~/bin/sql is a symlink that goes through sqlcl-latest, not straight to a version folder.

That last point is what makes rollback cheap. If a new release misbehaves, I repoint sqlcl-latest at an older folder and ~/bin/sql follows it automatically. No need to touch ~/bin/sql at all.

Bash on W.P. Hill Tech

Upgrading SQLcl Versions With a Symlink Script

The habit I was trying to automate