Django1.8 migrations, custom user model, in non-SQLite databases

[Vaibhav Mallya]

I've outlined the details here:
​http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31844053/bizarre-issues-with-django-1-8-migrations-custom-user-model-and-postgres-mysql

Basically - developing with SQLite3 worked perfectly fine with my custom user model class Client(AbstractBaseUser, PermissionsMixin and custom User Manager class UserManager(BaseUserManager):

When time came to get to production and use postgres or mysql, things started failing. The root of it is that the migrations aren't being run in the right order, and there are foreign key relations that aren't maintained.

What's odd is that running ./manage.py migrate twice in a row seems to work. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to help with tests. In no particular order, I would love some advice on:

1) How to unblock myself such that stuff 'just works' (my nuclear option is removing the custom user model and custom user manager, and migrating the old data over, which will take some time)

2) Understanding why everything seemed to work fine with SQLite, and why it fails with postgres/mysql

The solution of running ./manage.py makemigrations offerdrive' listed here doesn't help unfortunately...:
https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/24524