Referencing default django.contrib packages permissions in data migrations, results in a "race condition"

[braiam]

Using a data migration to create users and assign them permissions related to any of the base django.contrib applications on a clean environment results in Permission.DoesNotExist. I first used the forums to describe my findings, but this seems the best channel.

To reproduce:

*Make sure to not run manage.py migrate until the last step*

1. Create an empty project and an empty app inside (lets say polls)
2. Enable the contrib.auth app and the polls app
3. Create an empty migration file "makemigration polls --empty"
4. Create an user and assign permissions for the User model in a data migration

def create_user(apps, schema_editor):
    User = apps.get_model("auth", "User")
    Permission = apps.get_model("auth", "Permission")
    ContentType = apps.get_model("contenttypes", "contenttype")

    user = User.objects.create_user("new_user")
   
    alias = schema_editor.connection.alias
    content_type_manager = ContentType.objects.db_manager(alias)
    user_type = content_type_manager.get_for_model(User, for_concrete_model=False)

    add_user_permission = Permission.objects.get(content_type=user_type, codename="add_user")

    user.user_permissions.add(add_user_permission)

class Migration(migrations.Migration):

    dependencies = [
        migrations.swappable_dependency(settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL),
    ]

    operations = [
        migrations.RunPython(create_user),
    ]

5. Now migrate.

The result should be that every time that the migration exits an app migration scripts it should create the permissions for the models created by that app, instead, the permissions are created after all migrations are done.

I'm not sure if the permissions/contenttype should be created as tables are created, or if it should be delayed as long as possible until a data migration occurs. This would make these kind of scenarios not being able to deploy in a clean environment.

[Simon Charette]

I first used the forums to describe my findings, but this seems the best channel.

This is a not a second level support channel. Please allow a reasonable amount of time (​3 hours is not enough) and at least peer validation before considering you might have run into an actual bug.

Please take a minute to refer to the Please read this first section of the New Ticket form that you filled in. ​The first line of the Reporting bugs and requesting features documentation states.

Check that someone hasn’t already filed the bug or feature request by searching or running custom queries in the ticket tracker.

Clicking the above links and searching for "permissions" links to #29843 (Create permissions using migration operations rather than using the post_migrate signal) which details the exact same use case you ran into.