The DatabaseUpdate.releaseDatabaseLocks method is intended to release database locks set by liquibase in the event of a server crash while the changes are running.

This does not work, and looks like it hasn’t been working since the update to Liquibase 4.x.

This appears to be because “StandardLockService.hasChangeLog()” method, which is simply a property accessor:

… ie, it does not check the underlying the liquibase lock table, like the list locks method does:

The hasChangeLock will only be true if this particular instance of the StandardLockService has taken our a lock, it doesn’t check to see if there are locks taken out by liquibase overall.