makemigrations doesn't detect changes in model

Delete every past migration files and __pycache__ files except __init__ then:

python manage.py makemigrations yourApp 

After that make sure that the db is the same as the code in model.py (remove new changes) and run next line:

python manage.py migrate --fake-initial

Now add all your changes in the model.py and run next lines:

python manage.py makemigrations 
python manage.py migrate

Best Regards, Kristian

I had the same issue. I realised I had a property defined on the model with the same name as a field I was trying to add on the model. Ensure the model doesn't have a model property/method with the same name as the field you are trying to add.

You should not delete migrations, you should squash them. If you simply deleted the files you likely messed things up, the easiest way to recover is re-sync your code to get the files back. A more complex route is to delete all the records from the django_migrations table and re-init the migrations from scratch but there is more steps/issues than I can really get into and I don't recommend it.

The reason makemigrations is not detecting the change is likely because there is no migrations folder in that app. If you run python manage.py makemigrations your_app --initial it might detect and generate the migrations or it might freak out because of the difference in your files and the django_migrations table.

The --run-syncdb command is great when you don't care about the data, usually before you actually deploy but once you start using migrations you should not use the --run-syncdb command anymore. For instance, during initial development here is the code I run every model change instead of dealing with migrations:

dropdb mydb && createdb mydb && python manage.py migrate --run-syncdb && python manage.py loaddata initial

I store all the initial data in a fixtures file and the command wipes out the entire database, the --run-syncdb rebuilds the schema, and the initial data is loaded while skipping actual migration files.

So, if you don't care about any of your data or can easily move it to a fixture than you can drop and re-create the DB. You are then free to delete all migration folders and you can use the command above until you go live and need to move to using migrations.

UPDATE FOR DJANGO 1.11

I started using Django 1.11 and noticed the test framework can fail if you have dependencies on framework models and don't actually have migrations. This is the new command i'm using to wipe everything out and start over while still developing.

dropdb yourdb && createdb yourdb && find . -name "migrations" -type d -prune -exec rm -rf {} \; && python manage.py makemigrations name every app you use seperated by space && python manage.py migrate && python manage.py loaddata initial

I put this in a builddb.sh at the root of my project (next to manage.py) so I can just run ./builddb.sh. Be sure to delete it on deploy so there is no accidents!