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Does django consists of a migration concept without south app ?

If not why didn't they include it in Django 1.4 ? [ Since, its a must have ]

Please help..

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You might as well ask, why it hasn't been included in earlier versions. Django-south has been around for quite some time. Also, why is it a must-have? –  XORcist May 16 '12 at 7:37
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3 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

No, it doesn't. South is considered as the 'de facto' standard for database migration in Django. Further reading can be found in the Django development wiki.

From the version 1.2 release notes:


This, most probably, is still valid. South has it's limitations, it still has gaps that could be considered as flaws when being a django.contrib module.

That said, i want to add: south still is extremely userfull.

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Why has south not being included in contrib.auth if its 'de facto' ? –  Yugal Jindle May 16 '12 at 7:54
Please elaborate.. –  Yugal Jindle May 16 '12 at 7:54
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South is not the only migration app that works with Django. See http://djangopackages.com/grids/g/database-migration/ for some current options. Simon Willison also co-created Dmigrations but it's old and hasn't had a commit for a few years.

South is generally accepted to be the best at the moment, though I've not tried NashVegas (partly because South is so good, I've not needed to)

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Thanks for the info, but the context of the question was - does core django supports migrations with south or any other similar app. –  Yugal Jindle May 16 '12 at 10:27
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Update Oct 2013

Following a successful kickstarter campaign, schema migrations will be added to the Django core starting with version 1.7


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More info now at docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/migrations –  Mark Jan 23 at 13:03
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