id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	component	version	severity	resolution	keywords	cc	stage	has_patch	needs_docs	needs_tests	needs_better_patch	easy	ui_ux
21232	DATABASES ENGINE settings undocumented breaking change from 1.3 to 1.4 (full class path)	ddjango@…	nobody	"Up through Django 1.3, the following shortcut worked in DATABASES settings:

DATABASES = {
    'default' : {
        'ENGINE':   'sqlite3',
        'NAME':     'my.db',
        'USER':     '',
        'PASSWORD': '',
        'HOST':     '',
        'PORT':     '',
    },
}

As of DJango 1.4 (tested on 1.4.8), starting the app results in:

django.core.exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured: 'sqlite3' isn't an available database backend.
Try using django.db.backends.sqlite3 instead.

Changing ENGINE to 'django.db.backends.sqlite3' does indeed fix the problem.

However this is not listed anywhere in the 1.4 release notes:
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.4/releases/1.4/#backwards-incompatible-changes-in-1-4

P.S. Our project started in Django 0.9 and has been carried forward one version at a time.  Presumably at some point this was the suggested way of doing this, and it's worked up until 1.4.  The change is fine, and the error message is helpful, but the release notes need to include this."	Bug	closed	Documentation	1.4	Normal	wontfix			Unreviewed	0	0	0	0	0	0