django - ValueError: Dependency on app with no migrations - django

Question

I'm deploying my Django project to a VPS using Dokku. My project uses a CustomUser model, and there are two apps in the project: accounts which has the CustomUser and gradebook.
During deployment the process runs makemigrations and migrate. After deployment when I run python manage.py showmigrations I get the following:
account
[X] 0001_initial
[X] 0002_email_max_length
accounts
(no migrations)
admin
[X] 0001_initial
[X] 0002_logentry_remove_auto_add
[X] 0003_logentry_add_action_flag_choices
auth
[X] 0001_initial
[X] 0002_alter_permission_name_max_length
[X] 0003_alter_user_email_max_length
[X] 0004_alter_user_username_opts
[X] 0005_alter_user_last_login_null
[X] 0006_require_contenttypes_0002
[X] 0007_alter_validators_add_error_messages
[X] 0008_alter_user_username_max_length
[X] 0009_alter_user_last_name_max_length
[X] 0010_alter_group_name_max_length
[X] 0011_update_proxy_permissions
[X] 0012_alter_user_first_name_max_length
contenttypes
[X] 0001_initial
[X] 0002_remove_content_type_name
gradebook
(no migrations)
sessions
[X] 0001_initial
sites
[X] 0001_initial
[X] 0002_alter_domain_unique
Where account is from django-allauth.
It looks like my apps are not being migrated. So I then do:
me#myserver:/home$ dokku run gradebook python manage.py makemigrations accounts
success
Migrations for 'accounts':
accounts/migrations/0001_initial.py
- Create model CustomUser
me#myserver:/home$
And it looks like things are ready migrate. I then run migrate and get an error django - ValueError: Dependency on app with no migrations: accounts:
shmish#Henry:/home$ dokku run gradebook python manage.py migrate accounts
success
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/app/.heroku/python/lib/python3.8/site-packages/django/db/migrations/loader.py", line 174, in check_key
return self.graph.root_nodes(key[0])[0]
IndexError: list index out of range
During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "manage.py", line 22, in <module>
main()
File "manage.py", line 18, in main
execute_from_command_line(sys.argv)
File "/app/.heroku/python/lib/python3.8/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 419, in execute_from_command_line
utility.execute()
File "/app/.heroku/python/lib/python3.8/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 413, in execute
self.fetch_command(subcommand).run_from_argv(self.argv)
File "/app/.heroku/python/lib/python3.8/site-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 354, in run_from_argv
self.execute(*args, **cmd_options)
File "/app/.heroku/python/lib/python3.8/site-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 398, in execute
output = self.handle(*args, **options)
File "/app/.heroku/python/lib/python3.8/site-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 89, in wrapped
res = handle_func(*args, **kwargs)
File "/app/.heroku/python/lib/python3.8/site-packages/django/core/management/commands/migrate.py", line 92, in handle
executor = MigrationExecutor(connection, self.migration_progress_callback)
File "/app/.heroku/python/lib/python3.8/site-packages/django/db/migrations/executor.py", line 18, in __init__
self.loader = MigrationLoader(self.connection)
File "/app/.heroku/python/lib/python3.8/site-packages/django/db/migrations/loader.py", line 53, in __init__
self.build_graph()
File "/app/.heroku/python/lib/python3.8/site-packages/django/db/migrations/loader.py", line 235, in build_graph
self.add_external_dependencies(key, migration)
File "/app/.heroku/python/lib/python3.8/site-packages/django/db/migrations/loader.py", line 199, in add_external_dependencies
parent = self.check_key(parent, key[0])
File "/app/.heroku/python/lib/python3.8/site-packages/django/db/migrations/loader.py", line 181, in check_key
raise ValueError("Dependency on app with no migrations: %s" % key[0])
ValueError: Dependency on app with no migrations: accounts
2021/08/25 16:19:16 exit status 1
At this point I am unable to migrate either of my apps. Another thing I find strange about this is that I'm still able to createsuperuser, go into the shell, from accounts.models import CustomUser and successfully query CustomUser.
This error looks similar to this: ValueError: Dependency on app with no migrations: account but I don't see a solution.
Next
I re-created my database on my dev and prod servers. On dev I re-ran the initial migrations and then committed to my repository. I then deployed to my production server. The migrations appear to work but I am unable to get past the login and signup forms. I've been unable to determine what the exact error is, but the page times out and gives a message "We're sorry, but something went wrong." which I assume is an nginx message.
After a few attempts at deploys to fix the problem I get new migration errors:
Your models in app(s): 'account' have changes that are not yet reflected in a migration, and so won't be applied.
Run 'manage.py makemigrations' to make new migrations, and then re-run 'manage.py migrate' to apply them.
This is an endless circle of makemigrations which appear to work, then migrate, then the error comes back up.
Note - I'm able to go into the shell and manually create a CustomUser object, but I'm unable to get past the forms on the first page of the website.
This is now looking just like this error from 2015: Django Heroku Error "Your models have changes that are not yet reflected in a migration"
All of this works fine on my dev environment, the big difference being that it is Docker while prod is Dokku.

Answer 1

check your git ignore, makesure folder migration comment or delete from gitignore file