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alter table RENAME COLUMN took 3 hours
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> I’ve got no experience building and installing software like this.

...A situation that will persist until you try, just once. :)

> with some flailing I managed to install SQLIte 3.31.1 using homebrew

You characterize "install Homebrew ; brew install sqlite" as "flailing"? Even a macOS `.dmg` package is a two-step install procedure.

> I don’t feel I have the time to start exploring down another rabbit hole.

Only you can say what your time constraints are, but [it really isn't all that difficult][1]. Skip down to "Compiling." The tarball referenced in the first step of those instructions is the snapshot drh just pointed you to.

> Oracle would not chase around and try to fix all of my triggers and references if I change the name of a table or column and frankly I prefer that behavior.

Enable [legacy ALTER TABLE][2] behavior, then.

> maybe you had good reasons to do it this way. 

The "legacy" method allowed [referential integrity][3] to be broken, which is a violation of [the "C" in ACID][4].

[1]: https://sqlite.org/src/doc/trunk/README.md
[2]: https://www.sqlite.org/pragma.html#pragma_legacy_alter_table
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referential_integrity
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACID#Consistency