archive_index shouldn't do explicit ordering

[James Bennett]

Currently, the date-based archive_index and archive_year (when make_object_list is True) generic views use explicit calls to order_by to re-order the QuerySet they receive. There are two problems with this:

1. They do it inconsistently: archive_index sorts by date_field descending, while archive_year sorts by date_field ascending.
2. In doing so, they override any ordering specified by the model or already applied to the QuerySet, reducing their flexibility.

For sake of consistency with each other and with the other date-based generic views, and to restore the flexibility of allowing the user to choose how the QuerySet will be ordered, both views should stop trying to do an explicit order_by.

[James Bennett]

Patch which removes the order_by calls

[Simon G. <dev@…>]

Sounds fairly sensible. Do we need to add info about the ordering to the generic views docs?

[Malcolm Tredinnick]

This isn't ready to commit yet. There's a genuine issue that's been raised by Gary Wilson in ​the related django-dev thread (the third post).

[Gary Wilson]

Renaming ticket to just deal with archive_index, as there is already a ticket open (#3134) for archive_year (and it doesn't have the issue mentioned in the django-dev thread posted above).

[James Bennett]

I'm closing this because Gary fixed archive_year in [6057] and he's right that archive_index shouldn't be changed.