Run Django `manage.py makemigrations` without a database
All notes in this series:
- (1) Run Django `manage.py makemigrations` without a database
- (2) Using a non-pk as a foreign key in a Tastypie endpoint
- (3) Run Django makemigrations as tox task
- (4) Migrating from Tastypie to Django REST Framework
- (5) Decimal error when upgrading from Django 3.1 to Django 3.2
- (6) Normalizing a Django model
The makemigrations command does not require a database to be present. As such, it is actually quite straightforward to run makemigrations without even having a database. This can be very useful for the development cycle of: modifying model, run tests, update tests; without having to have a full deployment.
To run makemigrations when you don’t even have a manage.py, you can do the following. Assuming you are in the virtual environment with your Python package installed:
>>> from django.core.management import execute_from_command_line
>>> execute_from_command_line(["", "makemigrations", "--settings=my_module.settings"])
This will then create the new migration inside your Python package within the site-packages folder in your virtual environment.