Management commands autocomplete broken

[Akis Kesoglou]

Tabbing for command autocompletion in manage.py raises the following error:

$ ./manage.py sql<Tab>

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./manage.py", line 10, in <module>
    execute_from_command_line(sys.argv)
  File "/<virtualenv>/src/django/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 426, in execute_from_command_line
    utility.execute()
  File "/<virtualenv>/src/django/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 379, in execute
    self.autocomplete()
  File "/<virtualenv>/src/django/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 326, in autocomplete
    subcommands = list(get_commands()) + ['help']
  File "/<virtualenv>/bin/../lib/python3.3/functools.py", line 251, in wrapper
    result = user_function(*args, **kwds)
  File "/<virtualenv>/src/django/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 118, in get_commands
    app_configs = apps.get_app_configs()
  File "/<virtualenv>/src/django/django/apps/registry.py", line 121, in get_app_configs
    self.check_ready()
  File "/<virtualenv>/src/django/django/apps/registry.py", line 115, in check_ready
    raise RuntimeError("App registry isn't ready yet.")
RuntimeError: App registry isn't ready yet.

Bringing the issue up in #django-dev, mjtamlyn suggested moving the try/catch with django.setup() block to the beginning of ManagementUtility.execute() method, which fixed the issue. However, the change broke the test suite, specifically many tests from test_admin_scripts.

I'm not at all familiar with that (huge) part of the test suite, so i'm not sure how to go about it, even though i'm willing to help.

Python 3.3, Django@9918c11114ac3

[Aymeric Augustin]

The following patch fixes the issue:

diff --git a/django/core/management/__init__.py b/django/core/management/__init__.py
index 6d0cb7e..b6a7d53 100644
--- a/django/core/management/__init__.py
+++ b/django/core/management/__init__.py
@@ -376,7 +376,6 @@ class ManagementUtility(object):
         parser = LaxOptionParser(usage="%prog subcommand [options] [args]",
                                  version=get_version(),
                                  option_list=BaseCommand.option_list)
-        self.autocomplete()
         try:
             options, args = parser.parse_args(self.argv)
             handle_default_options(options)
@@ -391,6 +390,8 @@ class ManagementUtility(object):
         else:
             django.setup()
 
+        self.autocomplete()
+
         try:
             subcommand = self.argv[1]
         except IndexError:

It also makes autocompletion much slower. In order to discover management commands in applications referenced by an AppConfig in INSTALLED_APPS, one must populate the app registry, and that's slow.

I don't see how we can avoid it.

[Aymeric Augustin]

An alternative would be to import only apps, not models.

I'm reluctant to add this to the app registry for the sole purpose of autocompletion.

[Akis Kesoglou]

I tried the patch and it works here too. FWIW, I personally didn't see any noticeable difference in autocompletion delay, though the project I tried it on has only about 15-20 models including Django's.

[Aymeric Augustin <aymeric.augustin@…>]

In 0a7588dd3f5ec5beef0298389661e78fd63ad6a6:

Fixed #21770 -- Updated autocomplete for app-loading.

Thanks dfunckt for the report.