Misleading migrate "App 'apps.somethings' does not have migrations." error message with nested apps

[oliver]

If you have a couple of nested apps, or apps that are not available directly in the top-level namespace and you use migrate command, and pass the full dotted path to this command, the error message is somewhat misleading:

CommandError: App 'apps.somethings' does not have migrations.

In this case, the somethings app have migrations, but migrate command expecting just app_label.

And there is the other misleading error message.
If you use migrate command and pass nonexistent app in your INSTALLED_APP, the error message is somewhat misleading:

CommandError: App 'nonexistent_app' does not have migrations.

In this case, the nonexistent_app does not exist, but the error message make user think that nonexistent app just don't have migrations.

Currently, makemigrations command check for existence and validity of app. As follows

       # Make sure the app they asked for exists
        app_labels = set(app_labels)
        bad_app_labels = set()
        for app_label in app_labels:
            try:
                apps.get_app_config(app_label)
            except LookupError:
                bad_app_labels.add(app_label)
        if bad_app_labels:
            for app_label in bad_app_labels:
                if '.' in app_label:
                    self.stderr.write(
                        "'%s' is not a valid app label. Did you mean '%s'?" % (
                            app_label,
                            app_label.split('.')[-1],
                        )
                    )
                else:
                    self.stderr.write("App '%s' could not be found. Is it in INSTALLED_APPS?" % app_label)
            sys.exit(2)

How about checking that in migrate command?

This ticket is very similar to https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/29469.

But it is about migrate not makemigrations.
Please read this ticket.

[oliver]

​https://github.com/django/django/pull/10061

[Claude Paroz]

Thanks for the report and the proposed patch. I'll suggest a slightly different approach in an upcoming patch, as I think the fix for #29469 was not optimal either.

[Claude Paroz]

My suggested ​PR.

[Tim Graham <timograham@…>]

In c723a1ff:

Fixed #29506 -- Added validation for migrate's app_label option.

Thanks MyungSeKyo for the report and the initial patch.

[Tim Graham <timograham@…>]

In fc266151:

Refs #29506 -- Added validation for squashmigrations' app_label option.

[oliver]

Thank you too.
I learned a lot from your code!

Replying to Tim Graham <timograham@…>:

In c723a1ff:

Fixed #29506 -- Added validation for migrate's app_label option.

Thanks MyungSeKyo for the report and the initial patch.