Importing models from within `__init__.py` prevents syncdb from creating tables

[Julien Phalip]

I have a very simple app with this structure:

myapp/
    __init__.py
    models.py

That app wouldn't create its tables when running syncdb. After poking around I realised that it was because within the __init__.py I was importing the models:

# __init__.py

from models import *
...

So, my question: is that a case of "don't do that", and if so is that worth specifying in the documentation?

It took me quite a while to debug that, and I found nothing obvious in the docs to help me (if there is, please point me to it).

[Julien Phalip]

I could add that this is correct Pythonically and generates no exception. It's just that syncdb won't create the tables. If it's by design, then some clue should be given in the code or doc to help debug that.

[Luc Saffre]

I had probably the same problem, but less clear. I also imported models from the application's __init__.py, but the problem appeared only when I added another class definition (not a Model). I used manage.py testserver. It seemed that the whole application didn't get "activated" (also fixtures were not loaded) when this additional class definition was there. But no error message, not even when using -v 2. Also no error when importing these modules from a shell.
It stopped when I moved the additional code to another module and not importing it in __init__.py

[Arthur Koziel]

I can reproduce this with 1.0 but not with a recent trunk checkout (rev 10688).

[Arthur Koziel]

Okay, this bug was fixed in r10088

[Alex Gaynor]

Apparently the patch from the past fixed this. r10088