The Model's Meta option managed doesn't do what the documentation says it should.

[Tobi DEGNON]

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here. It's something I've noticed for a while (since Django 4.0), but I didn't think much of it. I thought I was doing something wrong, but I just created a blank new Django 5 project (​https://github.com/Tobi-De/django_managed_bug), added a new model with managed = False, and then ran the makemigrations command. It created a migration for a non-managed model, and running migrate created a table for that model.

This is what the documentation says about non-managed models:

If False, no database table creation, modification, or deletion operations will be performed for this model. This is useful if the model represents an existing table or a database view that has been created by some other means. This is the only difference when managed=False. All other aspects of model handling are exactly the same as normal. This includes

[Simon Charette]

I cannot produce with the project you provided. Django creates a migration to track the model but the underlying table is not created as documented.

SQLite version 3.37.0 2021-12-09 01:34:53
Enter ".help" for usage hints.
sqlite> SELECT * FROM django_migrations WHERE app = 'core';
18|core|0001_initial|2024-06-21 16:34:30.110518
sqlite> .tables
auth_group                  auth_user_user_permissions
auth_group_permissions      django_admin_log
auth_permission             django_content_type
auth_user                   django_migrations
auth_user_groups            django_session

sqlmigrate is coherent with that

$ ./manage.py sqlmigrate core 0001
BEGIN;
--
-- Create model Book
--
-- (no-op)
COMMIT;

There is a difference between creating a migration for tracking purposes and actually creating a table on migration.

Please see TicketClosingReasons/UseSupportChannels for further support.

[Tobi DEGNON]

Replying to Simon Charette:

I cannot produce with the project you provided. Django creates a migration to track the model but the underlying table is not created as documented.

SQLite version 3.37.0 2021-12-09 01:34:53
Enter ".help" for usage hints.
sqlite> SELECT * FROM django_migrations WHERE app = 'core';
18|core|0001_initial|2024-06-21 16:34:30.110518
sqlite> .tables
auth_group                  auth_user_user_permissions
auth_group_permissions      django_admin_log
auth_permission             django_content_type
auth_user                   django_migrations
auth_user_groups            django_session

sqlmigrate is coherent with that

$ ./manage.py sqlmigrate core 0001
BEGIN;
--
-- Create model Book
--
-- (no-op)
COMMIT;

There is a difference between creating a migration for tracking purposes and actually creating a table on migration.

Please see TicketClosingReasons/UseSupportChannels for further support.

My bad, thanks for the clarification, you are right, I was expecting no migration file to be created