Issue with Django 3.2 and Django-storage 1.14.2 after Upgrading from Django 2.2.28

[Akash Ilangovan]

• Upgraded from Django 2.2.28 to 3.2.
• Using Django-storage 1.14.2.
• Replaced CachedFilesMixin with ManifestStaticFilesStorage.
• Post-upgrade, everything was the same; no other settings changed.
• Issue: self.location is caching a None value that doesn't alter.
• Temporary Fix: Deleting the cache in the debugger manually with a del statement resolves the issue.

Code Snippet:

class StaticFilesStorage(ManifestStaticFilesStorage, S3Boto3Storage):
  def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
      S3Boto3Storage.__init__(self, bucket_name=settings.STATIC_FILES_BUCKET, custom_domain=domain(settings.STATIC_URL), *args, **kwargs)
      ManifestStaticFilesStorage.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs)

Error output:

File /usr/local/lib/python3.8/dist-packages/django/contrib/staticfiles/storage.py:38, in StaticFilesStorage.path(self, name)
     36 def path(self, name):
     37     if not self.location:
---> 38         raise ImproperlyConfigured("You're using the staticfiles app "
     39                                    "without having set the STATIC_ROOT "
     40                                    "setting to a filesystem path.")
     41     return super().path(name)

ImproperlyConfigured: You're using the staticfiles app without having set the STATIC_ROOT setting to a filesystem path.

PDB output showing cached None value in self.location:

(Pdb) self.base_location
'tmp/vantage/static/'
(Pdb) self.location
''
(Pdb) os.path.abspath(self.base_location)
'/app/tmp/vantage/static'
(Pdb) del self.location
(Pdb) self.location
'/app/tmp/vantage/static'
(Pdb) self._location
'tmp/vantage/static/'
(Pdb) c

The error is resolved after manually refreshing the cache on self.location

[Natalia Bidart]

Hello, thank you for your report!

I'll be closing this issue as invalid following the ​triaging docs, because:

1. On one hand, Django 2.2.x has been deprecated for more than a year and a half, and Django 3.2 is on security-only update mode.
2. On the other hand, given your custom implementation of StaticFilesStorage, is unclear how Django (itself) is at fault here. Have you tried seeking help in the Django user forum, or in the django-storages support channels?

The best place to get answers to your issue is using any of the user support channels from ​this link.