Understanding directory structure advice - django

Question

I started to create in Django sample project, first command:
django-admin.py startproject test
gives me:
- root
- test
- __init__.py
- settings.py
- urls.py
- wsgi.py
- manage.py
Now I create first app:
python manage.py startapp foo
it created for me folder root/foo
so how I should understand my root/test folder. Is this folder for global config of my project and nothing more? (similar to Symfony 2 app folder)
I am confused because Django docs tells:
The inner mysite/ directory is the actual Python package for your
project
but manage.py startapp foo create app under root, not under root/test (mysite equivalent)
[EDIT]
Two commands:
python manage.py startapp app
and:
django-admin.py startapp app
gives me app inside project root, not under root/name_of_generated_project
Django 1.4
[EDIT] 2
Sorry guys, my fault, now is everything ok.
[EDIT] 3
I want to create another project again:
django-admin.py startproject jobeet
my initial structure is similar to above.
Now I want to try create app (inside jobeet folder):
django-admin.py startapp jobs
and I end up with jobeet/jobs not jobeet/jobeet/jobs
again :/
so inside my project root I have:
- jobeet
- jobs
- manage.py
another command:
python manage.py startapp app
gives me the same result

Answer 1

So let's say you create a new Django project testproject:
django-admin.py startproject testproject
This creates a new project with the following minimal set of files:
testproject/
├── __init__.py
├── manage.py
├── settings.py
└── urls.py
To create a new app for your first site mysite1 go into testproject directory and run:
python manage.py startapp mysite1
which results in a new directory mysite1 for the mysite1 app.
I.e. with just these two commands you would arrive at this hierarchy:
testproject/
├── __init__.py
├── manage.py
├── mysite1
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── models.py
│   ├── tests.py
│   └── views.py
├── settings.py
└── urls.py
Refer to the django-admin.py and/or manage.py individual commands here.
In Django there is a one-to-many relationship between a project and an app. An app is usually one individual site component (e.g. comments, ratings), whereas a project is an organisation of several apps and can power many different sites. That's why you get the sites framework. In practice, one project usually serves one website, but with Django sites app with one project you can serve as many websites as you like, for reusability's sake.
P.S. I think creating a project simply called test is not a good practice because with Django unit tests at app level unit tests will go into a file called tests.py or within a folder called tests.
UPDATE for Django 1.4
As #zeantsoi has commented below, my answer:
applies to Django 1.3 and prior. Per the docs, beginning in 1.4, base
configuration files (including settings.py, urls.py, and wsgi.py) are
abstracted into a subdirectory titled the same name as the project.

Answer 2

"test" is the top level of your project. I've never used symphony 2 so I can't comment on that, but it seems like you have a grasp on it. The files that live in there are basically all global config files. Inside your "test" folder you should also have one or more app folders. Inside these app folders live the apps specific models, views, urls, etc.
It seems you've got something a little wrong your foo app should live in root/test/foo not root/foo.
Now in my projects I tend to have things like a virtualenv folder live in the root dir, but you definitively shouldn't have apps at that level (it just won't work)

Answer 3

manage.py doesn't provide a startproject command - that's usually a django-admin command. I'd check which manage.py you're executing, and ideally, use the manage.py from the project directory you've created.