[Answer]-Alter_column migrations are failing, do I care?

Sqlite3 is the problem. As you may see here, sqlite3 support just a limited subset of alter table operations so that is causing South to fail the migration. If you need to do this you’ll have to port the test database to another engine which supports alter table. Which I recommend, sometimes migrations can be tricky and you may think it’s working but is always better to test it.

If you think is working ok, so go on and just ignore the error, but caution, it may be working now but maybe the migrations didn’t succeed and later you’ll find strange database related bugs in your development environment.