django-linear-migrations

Ensure your migration history is linear.

For a bit of background, see the introductory blog post.

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Requirements

Python 3.9 to 3.13 supported.

Django 4.2 to 5.1 supported.

Installation

First, install with pip:

python -m pip install django-linear-migrations

Second, add the app to your INSTALLED_APPS setting:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...,
    "django_linear_migrations",
    ...,
]

Third, check the automatic detection of first-party apps. Run this command:

python manage.py create_max_migration_files --dry-run

This command is for creating max_migration.txt files (more on which later) - in dry run mode it lists the apps it would make such files for. It tries to automatically detect which apps are first-party, i.e. belong to your project. The automatic detection checks the path of app’s code to see if is within a virtualenv, but this detection can sometimes fail, for example on editable packages installed with -e. If you see any apps listed that aren’t part of your project, define the list of first-party apps’ labels in a FIRST_PARTY_APPS setting that you combine into INSTALLED_APPS:

FIRST_PARTY_APPS = []

INSTALLED_APPS = FIRST_PARTY_APPS + ["django_linear_migrations", ...]

Note: Django recommends you always list first-party apps first in your project so they can override things in third-party and contrib apps.

Fourth, create the max_migration.txt files for your first-party apps by re-running the command without the dry run flag:

python manage.py create_max_migration_files

Usage

django-linear-migrations helps you work on Django projects where several branches adding migrations may be in progress at any time. It enforces that your apps have a linear migration history, avoiding merge migrations and the problems they can cause from migrations running in different orders. It does this by making makemigrations and squashmigrations record the name of the latest migration in per-app max_migration.txt files. These files will then cause a merge conflicts in your source control tool (Git, Mercurial, etc.) in the case of migrations being developed in parallel. The first merged migration for an app will prevent the second from being merged, without addressing the conflict. The included rebase_migration command can help automatically such conflicts.

Custom commands

django-linear-migrations relies on overriding the built-in makemigrations and squashmigrations commands. If your project has custom versions of these commands, ensure the app containing your custom commands is above django_linear_migrations, and that your commands subclass its Command class. For example, for makemigrations:

# myapp/management/commands/makemigrations.py
from django_linear_migrations.management.commands.makemigrations import (
    Command as BaseCommand,
)


class Command(BaseCommand):
    ...

System Checks

django-linear-migrations comes with several system checks that verify that your max_migration.txt files are in sync. These are:

• dlm.E001: <app_label>'s max_migration.txt does not exist.
• dlm.E002: <app_label>'s max_migration.txt contains multiple lines.
• dlm.E003: <app_label>'s max_migration.txt points to non-existent migration '<bad_migration_name>'.
• dlm.E004: <app_label>'s max_migration.txt contains '<max_migration_name>', but the latest migration is '<real_max_migration_name>'.
• dlm.E005: Conflicting migrations detected; multiple leaf nodes in the migration graph: <conflicting_migrations>

create_max_migration_files Command

python manage.py create_max_migration_files [app_label [app_label ...]]

This management command creates max_migration.txt files for all first party apps, or the given labels. It’s used in initial installation of django-linear-migrations, and for recreating.

Pass the --dry-run flag to only list the max_migration.txt files that would be created.

Pass the --recreate flag to re-create files that already exist. This may be useful after altering migrations with merges or manually.

Adding new apps

When you add a new app to your project, you may need to create its max_migration.txt file to match any pre-created migrations. Add the new app to INSTALLED_APPS or FIRST_PARTY_APPS as appropriate, then rerun the creation command for the new app by specifying its label:

python manage.py create_max_migration_files my_new_app

rebase_migration Command

This management command can help you fix migration conflicts. Following a conflicted “rebase” operation in Git, run it with the name of the app to auto-fix the migrations for:

$ python manage.py rebase_migration <app_label>

The command uses the conflict information in the max_migration.txt file to determine which migration to rebase. It automatically detects whether a Git merge or rebase operation is in progress, assuming rebase if a Git repository cannot be found. The command then:

1. renames the migration
2. edits it to depend on the new migration from your main branch
3. updates max_migration.txt.

If Black is installed, the command formats the updated migration file with it, like Django’s built-in migration commands do. See below for some examples and caveats.

Note rebasing the migration might not always be the correct thing to do. If the migrations in your main and feature branches have both affected the same models, rebasing the migration to the end may not make sense. However, such parallel changes would normally cause conflicts in your model files or other parts of the source code as well.

Worked Example

Imagine you were working on your project's books app in a feature branch called titles and created a migration called 0002_longer_titles. Meanwhile a commit has been merged to your main branch with a different 2nd migration for books called 0002_author_nicknames. Thanks to django-linear-migrations, the max_migration.txt file will show as conflicted between your feature and main branches.

Start the fix by reversing your new migration from your local database. This is necessary since it will be renamed after rebasing and seen as unapplied. Do this by switching to the feature branch titles migrating back to the last common migration:

$ git switch titles
$ python manage.py migrate books 0001

Then, fetch the latest code:

$ git switch main
$ git pull
...

Next, rebase your titles branch on top of it. During this process, Git will detect the conflict on max_migration.txt:

$ git switch titles
$ git rebase main
Auto-merging books/models.py
CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in books/migrations/max_migration.txt
error: could not apply 123456789... Increase Book title length
Resolve all conflicts manually, mark them as resolved with
"git add/rm <conflicted_files>", then run "git rebase --continue".
You can instead skip this commit: run "git rebase --skip".
To abort and get back to the state before "git rebase", run "git rebase --abort".
Could not apply 123456789... Increase Book title length

The contents of the books app's max_migration.txt at this point will look something like this:

$ cat books/migrations/max_migration.txt
<<<<<<< HEAD
0002_author_nicknames
=======
0002_longer_titles
>>>>>>> 123456789 (Increase Book title length)

At this point, use rebase_migration to automatically fix the books migration history:

$ python manage.py rebase_migration books
Renamed 0002_longer_titles.py to 0003_longer_titles.py, updated its dependencies, and updated max_migration.txt.

This places the conflicted migration on the end of the migration history. It renames the file appropriately, modifies its dependencies = [...] declaration, and updates the migration named in max_migration.txt appropriately.

After this, you should be able to continue the rebase:

$ git add books/migrations
$ git rebase --continue

And then migrate your local database to allow you to continue development:

$ python manage.py migrate books
Operations to perform:
  Target specific migration: 0003_longer_titles, from books
Running migrations:
  Applying books.0002_author_nicknames... OK
  Applying books.0003_longer_titles... OK

Code Formatting

rebase_migration does not guarantee that its edits match your code style. If you use a formatter like Black, you’ll want to run it after applying rebase_migration.

If you use pre-commit, note that Git does not invoke hooks during rebase commits. You can run it manually on changed files with pre-commit run.

Branches With Multiple Commits

Imagine the same example as above, but your feature branch has several commits editing the migration. This time, before rebasing onto the latest main branch, squash the commits in your feature branch together. This way, rebase_migration can edit the migration file when the conflict occurs.

You can do this with:

$ git rebase -i --keep-base main

This will open Git’s interactive mode file. Edit this so that every comit after the first will be squashed, by starting each line with “s”. Then close the file, and the rebase will execute.

After this operation, you can rebase onto your latest main branch as per the previous example.

Branches With Multiple Migrations

rebase_migration does not currently support rebasing multiple migrations (in the same app). This is an open feature request, but it is not a priority, since it’s generally a good idea to restrict changes to one migration at a time. Consider merging your migrations into one before rebasing.

Inspiration

I’ve seen similar techniques to the one implemented by django-linear-migrations at several places, and they acted as the inspiration for putting this package together. My previous client Pollen and current client ev.energy both have implementations. This Doordash blogpost covers a similar system that uses a single file for tracking latest migrations. And there's also a package called django-migrations-git-conflicts which works fairly similarly.