Glossary: Project vs App

[Thomas Güttler]

There are several blog posts and stackoverflow answers about this topic:

"Project" vs "App".

I would like to see an official statements about these terms.

I checked the current docs and could not find a definition. I hope I was not blind :-)

What is an "app" and what is a "project"?

Here is what I tell new team mates:

Project: A project is a container for app. It contains only settings, no database models. Since it contains no database models it does not contain database schema migrations. It can contain migrations which fill a database with project specific data. A project might contain a sitecustomize.py

App: An app has models, views and code. It should be re-usable. An app can depend on an other apps. It must not depend on a project. An app can contain a settings.py for testing, but it has no settings on its own. It should have instructions which settings are needed to get the app running in a project. A app must not contain a sitecustomize.py.

[Aymeric Augustin]

There are a few words about this in ​https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/ref/applications/#projects-and-applications.

[Thomas Güttler]

Thank you for the link. I have not found that before.

I added above link to the relevant questions at stackoverflow.

Still I think this part could be improved to be more explicit.

What is wrong with my above definition? Could it be added to the docs?

[Tim Graham]

I'm not familiar with sitecustomize.py so I think that would need to be explained. I'm not sure if it's something that Django needs to discuss or not. Apps aren't necessarily reusable -- some are meant to be reuseable but others aren't. I think the startapp and startproject commands give a good idea about what each thing is but feel free to submit a pull request if you'd like to suggest some improvements.

[Aymeric Augustin]

Discussion: ​https://groups.google.com/d/msg/django-developers/E8ViGUa-BT0/E4SLXsg6AwAJ

[Thomas Güttler]

I created a pull request to improve the docs: ​https://github.com/django/django/pull/5788

[Tim Graham]

Another try: ​PR

[Tim Graham <timograham@…>]

In e0519301:

Fixed #25748 -- Added clarification on projects vs. applications.

Thanks Thomas Güttler for motivating this addition.

[Tim Graham <timograham@…>]

In 406acd6:

[1.9.x] Fixed #25748 -- Added clarification on projects vs. applications.

Thanks Thomas Güttler for motivating this addition.

Backport of e0519301238b43633bab64054772f9a62634a05f from master

[Thomas Güttler]

Follow up: #26032

[Thomas Güttler]

Just for the records: a virtualenv can't provide a custom sitecustomize.py. This works on some linux distributions, but not on all. Some distributions provide a global sitecustomize. Use usercustomize instead.