Cannot call a command with --name option

[Raffaele Salmaso]

call_command use (name, *args, **options) as signature, making impossible to call a command with --name option as

call_command('my_cmd', name='my_fancy_name')

[Raffaele Salmaso]

Working on https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/23302 I'm adding some tests to migrations/test_commands and hits a limitation with call_command: cannot pass name='xyz' as option.
The more compatible way to call it is to have another function with desired signature. So in ​https://github.com/rsalmaso/django/tree/23306 (PR ​https://github.com/django/django/pull/3079) I've added a new function exec_command(name, args=None, options=None) (code is the same of old call_command).

Needs some docs if can be accepted.

(My first PR, hope techically is all ok, I'm fighting with git more than I though)

[Claude Paroz]

This is not true for current master (see [2cc8ffe2580080]) where you should now be able to call call_command('my_cmd', '--name', 'my_fancy_name') (​https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/django-admin/#call-command).
In 1.7 though, I'd suggest using a temporary workaround by "manually" instanciating the command and calling execute. Feel free to request more help if this is not clear for you.

[Raffaele Salmaso]

Too recent that I've missed :D
But I've some problems running it as call_command("makemigrations", "migrations", "--empty", "--verbosity", "0") (tests/migrations/test_commands.py:279)

test_makemigrations_empty_migration (migrations.test_commands.MakeMigrationsTests) ... App '--verbosity' could not be found. Is it in INSTALLED_APPS?
App '0' could not be found. Is it in INSTALLED_APPS?
App '--empty' could not be found. Is it in INSTALLED_APPS?
ERROR

[tested against dfde0b3b063c0ec511fe6d58789468b6c229c59b]
It seems that the "error" is the first argument ("migrations") because call_command("makemigrations", "--help") works fine. It seems a problem with makemigrations command itself. I'll dig it a bit and I'll open a new ticket.

[Claude Paroz]

That's a good catch, you spotted a flaw in my recent patch. The call_command code misses the part that begins with # Move positional args out of options to mimic legacy optparse in the run_from_argv code. I'd be grateful if you would open a ticket for that.

[Raffaele Salmaso]

Yep, I've just found it :)
Tomorrow I'll open a ticket and a PR (added some tests)