Django management command to detect missing migration files.

gistfile1.py

import sys

from django.apps import apps
from django.conf import settings
from django.core.management.base import BaseCommand
from django.db import connections
from django.db.migrations.autodetector import MigrationAutodetector
from django.db.migrations.executor import MigrationExecutor
from django.db.migrations.state import ProjectState
from django.db.utils import OperationalError


class Command(BaseCommand):
    """
    Detect if any apps have missing migration files

    (not necessaily applied though)
    """
    help = "Detect if any apps have missing migration files"

    def handle(self, *args, **kwargs):

        changed = set()

        self.stdout.write("Checking...")
        for db in settings.DATABASES.keys():

            try:
                executor = MigrationExecutor(connections[db])
            except OperationalError:
                sys.exit("Unable to check migrations: cannot connect to database\n")

            autodetector = MigrationAutodetector(
                executor.loader.project_state(),
                ProjectState.from_apps(apps),
            )

            changed.update(autodetector.changes(graph=executor.loader.graph).keys())

        if changed:
            sys.exit("Apps with model changes but no corresponding migration file: %(changed)s\n" % {
                'changed': list(changed)
            })
        else:
            sys.stdout.write("All migration files present\n")

Useful as part of a Continuous Integration system, to alert when makemigrations needs to be run. (Or standalone, or part of a Fabric deployment process for example.)

For CI setup it just needs an empty database created for each database defined in settings.DATABASES (that's in addition to the equivalent test databases the test suite creates).

The need for a migration can easily be missed with Django's native Migrations because there are may more minor model changes that require one, which a developer might forget about (e.g. a field label or help_text edit).

great command @nealtood! forked it to allow ignoring some apps (useful for ignoring some third-party ones): https://gist.github.com/fjsj/3df250b88c0163fd661dfc4d6d67877f

As of Django 1.10, you can run ./manage.py makemigrations --check to detect missing migrations. See https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/ref/django-admin/#cmdoption-makemigrations-check.

To only detect and not actually create them: ./manage.py makemigrations --check --dry-run