We Keep Coding

Cannot make a migration in Django project to compose up docker file

I have a Django project that uses old version of django.db.models.signals - post_syncdb. I changed models and added new to the db. To make docker-compose up and launch Django with docker I need to make a migration, but when I'm doing this it shows me this error
`AttributeError: module 'django.db.models.signals' has no attribute 'post_syncdb'
I tried google the solution and noticed three ways:
Check the Django version used in the project, as the post_syncdb signal has been deprecated since Django 1.9.
Look through the project's code and identify any references to post_syncdb signal. If there are any, you may have to update the code to use a different signal.
If the error persists, it may be a bug in one of the installed packages. You can try to update the packages to the latest version or raise an issue on the package's repository.
The problem is that it's not mu project and I currently work on dev branch. How do I fix it and make a migration?

Installing django-userena: userena.compat.SiteProfileNotAvailable when trying to create accounts app

Running Django 1.9 I'm trying to follow the install instructions for django-userena, to add it to an existing django project.
When I try to create the Accounts app:
python manage.py startapp accounts
I get this error:
userena.compat.SiteProfileNotAvailable
Other questions indicate that I need to set AUTH_PROFILE_MODULE, as directed in the installation instructions. However, these assume I already have an Accounts app created, within which I've created a Profile model.
So I seem like I'm stuck in a circular dependancy where I can't create the Accounts app without a Profile model, but I can't create the Profile model without the Accounts app!
Also, from the instructions, it doesn't appear the AUTH_PROFILE_MODULE should be required yet at this step, in order to create the Accounts app.
How do I solve this?

Make sure to that userena and the other apps are not yet installed, since
manage.py startapp accounts is the first step in the installation instructions.

Django: getting rid of RemovedInDjango19Warning for contenttypes

I'd like to get rid of this warning the "right" way, by ensuring I'm ready to update to Django 1.9 when it arrives.
The deprecation warning I get is the following:
/Users/.../south/modelsinspector.py:20: RemovedInDjango19Warning: django.contrib.contenttypes.generic is deprecated and will be removed in Django 1.9. Its contents have been moved to the fields, forms, and admin submodules of django.contrib.contenttypes.
from django.contrib.contenttypes import generic
I've done a complete search of my project for the phrase django.contrib.contenttypes, and the only place I can find it is in INSTALLED_APPS.
However, when I remove it from INSTALLED_APPS (not sure that I really should be doing that!), I get yet a different DeprecationWarning:
/Users/.../django/contrib/contenttypes/models.py:159: RemovedInDjango19Warning: Model class django.contrib.contenttypes.models.ContentType doesn't declare an explicit app_label and either isn't in an application in INSTALLED_APPS or else was imported before its application was loaded. This will no longer be supported in Django 1.9.
class ContentType(models.Model):
What is the right thing for me to do?

It looks like the message is telling you that the problem is coming from the app South, not your code base.
Usually, the correct way to prevent the deprecation error would be to upgrade the app to a version that has fixed the problem. Sometimes, that might not be possible if a new version hasn't been released yet.
However, in this case, I don't know why you have South installed at all. For Django 1.7+, you should be using Django's built in migrations. Have you tried removing 'south' from your installed apps?

Change the order in which Django migrate app during testing

I am using the custom user model which inherits from the AbstractBaseUser class. When I try to migrate after makemigrations command
django.db.utils.ProgrammingError: relation "custom_user_users" does not exist
This is happening since Django is trying to migrate other apps first which depends upon the custom user model. Even I tried to changing the order of the app which contains the custom user model in INSTALLED_APP but no luck.
I know I can force fully migrate custom_user model first then let Django migrate all other models. This solves the problem but during running test it runs the migration in order which Django decides.
How can I alter the order in which apps are migrated during test ? Any other way to solve this dependency problem ?
I am using Django 1.8

Put your your apps before Django apps in INSTALLED_APP in settings.py file

https://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-test-without-migrations adds a --nomigrations flag to manage.py test. Works like a charm.

NoMigrations error in Django

I am building an app called 'competencies'. I made changes to models, migrated the app locally, and everything worked. This is my eighth migration on the app.
I have deployed the app on heroku, so I committed changes and pushed to heroku. I can see that the changes went through, because the new migrations appear in the heroku files. When I log in to heroku and try to migrate the competencies app, I get the following error:
NoMigrations: Application '<module 'django.contrib.admin' from '/app/.heroku/python/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/contrib/admin/__init__.py'>' has no migrations.
I have searched for this error, and I have not found anything meaningful. Can anyone suggest what I am doing wrong, or how to address the issue?

django.contrib.admin should not have migrations. Contrib packages are not south managed.
If you EVER ran python manage.py schemamigration django.contrib.auth --XXX on your local it would create the migrations folder in your local copy's install of the venv's django. However, this will never get transferred to heroku.
test something for me. create a new copy of your site on your local machine
new DB
new virtualenv
new folder w/ new clone of repo
try to run python manage.py migrate if you get the same error its b/c you broke your virtualenv with south.
Something else you could try IF your database models have not changed a bunch since the last working copy:
roll your models back to the last working configuration
delete EVERY app's migrations folder
truncate south_migrations table
run python manage.py schemamigration --initial X for each of your apps.
push and migrate --fake
redo your model changes
create migrations for the model changes
push and migrate regularly

I recently encountered this error after dumping a live database to a dev box for testing data migrations.
One of the dependencies was throwing this error (specifically taggit). I think that I have a different version of taggit on the dev box which does not have migrations, but the database I dumped had two migrations for taggit in south_migrationhistory.
I deleted the entries in south_migrationhistory for the problem app erroneously claiming NoMigrations and that solved my problem. Everything's running again.

Apart from many answers posted above, south.exceptions.NoMigrations is often exception after 2014 (Django 1.7) because of changed migrations directory. The directory is default for Django built in migrations.
For south migration, the directory is south_migrations. South>=1.0 can recognize this and automatically detect migrations. See details here on Django docs
In this case, update South:
pip install -U South
Or you can also specify migration directory on settings file (for every app installed).

I found an odd edge case, involving Kombu.
I'm maintaining a legacy Django 1.5 project on Ubuntu 14.04, and I previously had this setting to get Kombu to play nicely:
SOUTH_MIGRATION_MODULES = {
'kombu_transport_django': 'kombu.transport.django.south_migrations',
}
However, after I upgraded to Ubuntu 16, there were some minor tweaks in the Python stdlib that again broke Kombu. Upgrading Kombu was the only immediate solution, but that gave me another Kombu error similar to what OP found:
NoMigrations: Application '<module 'kombu.transport.django' from '/myproject/.env/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/kombu/transport/django/__init__.pyc'>' has no migrations.
This error message is nearly worthless, but I eventually realized the problem was my SOUTH_MIGRATION_MODULES setting. It turns out, the old kombu.transport.django.south_migrations was removed, and South trying to import this missing migration directory is what was causing the error. The fix was to remove that line.

Try pip install --upgrade django
The NoMigrations error often shows up if you downgrade your Django version.
In my case, I had installed a package which automatically uninstalled my current Django version and installed a downgraded it.
Installing the updated version was a quick fix.
Also, you may want to check in your INSTALLED_APPS if you have included all of your apps including the 'django.contrib.auth' and 'django.contrib.admin'