Opened 14 years ago

Closed 13 years ago

Last modified 12 years ago

#14130 closed (fixed)

Catching ImportError in manage.py considered dangerous

Reported by: Setok Owned by: nobody
Component: Core (Other) Version: 1.1
Severity: Keywords: manage settings import sprintnov13
Cc: Łukasz Rekucki, Béres Botond Triage Stage: Ready for checkin
Has patch: yes Needs documentation: no
Needs tests: no Patch needs improvement: no
Easy pickings: no UI/UX: no

Description

The basic implementation of manage.py does little else than check for an ImportError on settings. Unfortunately using try-except to check for module existence in Python is not a very good practise. The problem is that it hides any possible import errors that may occur within settings.py. Sure, the error displayed by manage.py does mention that possibility, but only in parenthesis, after bold text about settings.py missing.

Having just spend several hours trying to figure out what was going on I believe that, in balance, it would be better just to let the Python error fall through and for a proper stacktrace to occur. Alternatively try to figure out a way to detect if it was, in fact, the settings module which was missing, or something else. Annoyingly Python's ImportError does not seem to easily have that information available :(

Attachments (2)

fix14130.patch (1.1 KB ) - added by Matthias Kestenholz 13 years ago.
trac-14130.diff (1.1 KB ) - added by steph 13 years ago.
Updated the patch and removed an unused import.

Download all attachments as: .zip

Change History (11)

comment:1 by Russell Keith-Magee, 14 years ago

milestone: 1.3
Triage Stage: UnreviewedAccepted

This is an example where Django is using ImportError to establish existence of a module; in Django 1.2, we added tools to check for existence of a module without importing the module; we should be doing the same here.

comment:2 by Łukasz Rekucki, 14 years ago

Cc: Łukasz Rekucki added

comment:3 by Béres Botond, 13 years ago

Cc: Béres Botond added

comment:4 by Matthias Kestenholz, 13 years ago

Has patch: set

Patch attached.

by Matthias Kestenholz, 13 years ago

Attachment: fix14130.patch added

by steph, 13 years ago

Attachment: trac-14130.diff added

Updated the patch and removed an unused import.

comment:5 by steph, 13 years ago

.. just updated the patch (removed an unused import).

comment:6 by steph, 13 years ago

Keywords: sprintnov13 added

comment:7 by Ramiro Morales, 13 years ago

Triage Stage: AcceptedReady for checkin

comment:8 by Ramiro Morales, 13 years ago

Resolution: fixed
Status: newclosed

In [15522]:

Fixed #14130 -- Made manage.py error reporting more useful when the settings.py file triggers import errors (in new projects). Thanks Setok for the report, mk and steph for their work.

comment:9 by Jacob, 12 years ago

milestone: 1.3

Milestone 1.3 deleted

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