Problem migrating from South to Django migrations for Linux distributions

[Raphael Hertzog <raphael@ouaza.com>]

[ Please keep me in CC ]

Hello,

I'm one of the python-django Debian package maintainers and I have been
working on preparing the field for Django 1.7... and we have one problem
that we don't know how to handle.

Consider that Debian contains Django but also Django applications using
South. When our users will upgrade from Debian 7 to Debian 8
they will upgrade at the same time Django itself and the Django applications.

The new versions of the Django applications are likely to have unapplied
schema migrations managed by South but the system will have Django 1.7
and we have no means to let the users apply those schema changes.

I see two ways to go forward:
- either we find a way to apply South migrations with Django 1.7
- or we enhance Django migrations to be able to tag some point
  in the Django migrations as equivalent to some other point in the
  South migrations, that way we can recreate the supposedly-unapplied
  South migrations with Django 1.7 and mark those as unneeded if all
  South migrations were already applied

How can we solve this problem?

Thank you for your help!
-- 
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Writer/Consultant ◈ Debian Developer

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