

What’s your favorite Django app? - niels
http://www.jacobian.org/writing/favorite-apps/

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stuartk
I still believe South should be included in Django itself, but the South devs
wanted to keep it as a separate app.

I remember when I first started learning Django. You follow the tutorial,
write your models. Then you start playing about and want to add an extra field
to a model and....oh wait, I need to either add it manually to the database or
use a 3rd party app to do it.

To my mind it's part of the workflow as you build an app.

~~~
po
It is definitely part of the workflow. I don't see how having it separate
makes it any less of a part of your workflow. Git is also a part of my
workflow. No harm in having it be separate.

The advantage to keeping it separate is it allows South to release on it's own
faster schedule. It gets features much quicker than the base framework.

I imagine it will get rolled in some day, when the feature set stabilizes a
bit.

~~~
stuartk
Good point in regards to a faster release schedule for South.

And yes, it is part of my workflow.

But for a new Django developer, it's not obvious, as it's not part of the
documentation.

~~~
po
The fact that it's not obvious is also a good point.

I recently brought up the documentation issue on the mailing list and received
a pretty encouraging response from Mr. Kaplan-Moss himself:

[http://groups.google.com/group/django-
developers/browse_thre...](http://groups.google.com/group/django-
developers/browse_thread/thread/6e810d18249c2792)

Django 1.3 is a tightening of the bolts release so I am going through and
updating where improvements are needed and patching where I feel capable.
Perhaps you or others would like to improve the documentation as well?

~~~
levigross
I hope they start to use a DVCS to kickstart the development.

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mseebach
Back when I first started looking at Django, the "apps" concept looked really
promising. That you'd never need to worry about writing a comments-system
again, because there would be a comments-app. That you don't need to integrate
your main app with your blog and your CMS, because they'd just be separate
apps that you'd drop in and forget about.

But the mentioned apps .. aren't. They are tools, plug-ins and libraries. What
a shame.

~~~
po
Isn't that pretty much exactly what is delivered? Here's the comments app for
example:

<http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/contrib/comments/>

For tagging you have a choice between django-tagit and django-tagging. Mingus
for example took this to an extreme. Everything was a reusable app. Here's a
good article from the developer about it:

<http://djangoadvent.com/1.2/everything-i-hate-about-mingus/>

<http://github.com/montylounge/django-mingus/>

The one part of the reusable apps that tends not to get reused are the
templates. I find the models, middleware, admin tools, etc… to be a pretty
nice way to structure an app.

Moreover, I think it's pretty easy to get caught in a very horizontally
structured application because that's how they usually start. You put all of
the models in one directory, all of the views in another, etc… I find Django
urges you to think about how to slice your application into vertical chunks
early on which benefits development.

~~~
mseebach
Apps sure exist. I just found it disheartening that peoples favourite apps, in
a framework that, as you mention, encourages re-useable apps as much as Django
do, aren't proper apps, but plug-ins and tools.

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marcc
I don't know... Schema migration is rare and something I want complete control
over while the debug toolbar is something I use constantly. I definitely would
have submitted a vote for the toolbar.

~~~
StavrosK
Schema migration is something I _definitely_ want done right, otherwise
production _will_ break. If South didn't exist, I would think long and hard
about adding a field, and I'd have to make changes manually in the database,
in an error-prone and non-repeatable manner.

In short, you use DjDT more often, but South is _by far_ a much more important
part. Which one could you live without, South or DjDT?

I know which one I'd pick...

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levigross
I hope django.contrib moves forward in the right direction and these makes
these apps reusable

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geoffbp
my fav is probably sorl.thumbnail, followed by template_utils

