Document that changing model options unrelated to the database will create migrations

[davidray]

Django 1.7b4 tag

Steps to reproduce:

• Create initial migrations for app
• drop and recreate database
• Run python manage.py migrate
• Update a model field's verbose_name
• Run python manage.py migrate

Output is as follows:

Running migrations:
  No migrations needed.
  Your models have changes that are not yet reflected in a migration, and so won't be applied.
  Run 'manage.py makemigrations' to make new migrations, and then re-run 'manage.py migrate' to apply them.

• Run python manage.py makemigrations

Generates an AlterField migration:

# encoding: utf8
from __future__ import unicode_literals

from django.db import models, migrations


class Migration(migrations.Migration):

    dependencies = [
        ('myapp', '0001_initial'),
    ]

    operations = [
        migrations.AlterField(
            model_name='mymodel',
            name='myfield',
            field=models.ForeignKey(verbose_name='my verbose name', to_field='id', to='myapp.MyModel'),
        ),
    ]

I did not think that a modification to verbose_name would necessitate a migration.

[Tim Graham]

This is by design, see #22837. As it's becoming a FAQ, we should improve the documentation.

[davidray]

Is this really purely a documentation issue? The management command outputs antithetical feedback in this case:

  No migrations needed.

followed by:

  Your models have changes that are not yet reflected in a migration, and so won't be applied.
  Run 'manage.py makemigrations' to make new migrations, and then re-run 'manage.py migrate' to apply them.

[Tim Graham]

Sorry, I didn't read closely enough, that does seem odd.

[Andrew Godwin]

That output is the same no matter what options you change - it means:

• No migrations are needed to run
• You've got changes, so you need to run makemigrations

We added this as a hint to people who were just running migrate and getting confused. I'll update the message to be less confusing and add a docs paragraph about makemigrations and non-database-affecting parameters.

[Andrew Godwin <andrew@…>]

In 9f4852f649fad459a451995c4a17a7d8db5972c9:

Fixed #22863: Improve clarity of makemigrations for non-db params

[Andrew Godwin <andrew@…>]

In bfe5f72c7ee4ecec374af9a52c320c019abfc338:

[1.7.x] Fixed #22863: Improve clarity of makemigrations for non-db params