Full traceback if import error before model validation

[jedie]

I had an import loop in a app model. If i call the management command "runserver", i get only a one line error message, whitch doesn't help to find the real error.

django.core.management.base.execute should display a read traceback. See patch.

[jedie]

use traceback.format_exc()

[jedie]

django.core.management.base.BaseHandler.load_middleware will also "mask" some import errors. Add a separate patch, if settings.DEBUG is on, raise the original error instead of ImproperlyConfigured, so the user will get a helpfull traceback.

[jedie]

patch for #comment:3

[Allen Riddell]

I had a similar issue when running tests. I would do a manage.py test and get an django.core.exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured: App with label <label> could not be found. The real culprit was an import loop. As jedie suggests, displaying the original ImportError would be helpful.

I'll attached a patch for the manage.py test case as django_11667_manage_test.diff.

[Allen Riddell]

patch for #comment:4

[peterlundberg]

I agree that wrapping the exceptions makes debugging import errors very hard and would be Good Thing to improve with Django

I have on occasion replaced

raise ImproperlyConfigured('ImportError %s: %s' % (app, e.args[0]))

with just

raise

in template/loaders/app_directories.py line 24 (django 1.2.1) which allows me to see what module/file was trying to do the failing import when running manage.py test

A message like 'cannot import %s from %s line %d' from ImportError would help a lot, but that is more a python issue.

[Klaas van Schelven]

Any movement on this?

I can't count the number of times I've dived into the Django code and added a 'raise'. Of course, the proper solution would be simply to drop the associated try/catch block, since all it does is obfuscate things.

This can be rewritten:

206         if self.can_import_settings:
207             try:
208                 from django.utils import translation
209                 translation.activate('en-us')
210             except ImportError, e:
211                 # If settings should be available, but aren't,
212                 # raise the error and quit.
213                 sys.stderr.write(smart_str(self.style.ERROR('Error: %s\n' % e)))
214                 sys.exit(1)

I'll submit a patch in a sec.

[Klaas van Schelven]

A patch that drops the try/catch block altogether

[anonymous]

Thanks so much!!

[Aymeric Augustin]

I'm closing this ticket in favor of #16397 which reports the same problem (as far as I can tell) and has a more recent patch.

[Aymeric Augustin]

In [17197]:

Fixed #16397 -- Respected the --traceback flag in BaseCommand. This should make import loops easier to debug. Refs #11667, #17369.