Django 3.2 app config search prevents single-file apps

[Adam Johnson]

My third party package django-read-only is implemented as a single file (​pre-3.1-support source). With Django <3.2's default_app_config, it could point to its app config within the same module by defining default_app_config.

Now the AppConfig logic *requires* an apps submodule, which means apps cannot be single-file modules but have to be packages.

To work around this in django-read-only I made it into package, left all the logic in its __init__.py, and added a "dummy" apps.py that has only the line from django_read_only import DjangoReadOnlyAppConfig (moving the app config would complicate its implementation). (​commit )

Could we make the apps logic not search for an 'apps' submodule in the case of non-package modules, and instead check in the base module?

[Mariusz Felisiak]

django_read_only==1.2.0 works fine as a single file (without default_app_config) when you will use django_read_only.DjangoReadOnlyAppConfig in the INSTALLED_APPS, instead of django_read_only. It's niche, so I'm not sure if supporting default app configs in the base module is worth additional complexity and side-effects (such as e.g. ​clashes), but we could evaluate a patch.

[Adam Johnson]

Yes that's true. It's probably not worth complicating things.