What should I use instead of syncdb in Django 1.9?

You should use the makemigrations and migrate commands that were introduced in django 1.7

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.7/topics/migrations/

You should definitely use migration system. Which lets you track changes in your models.py, and create migrations for the database. The migration system uses the commands makemigrations to create migrations and migrate to migrate the database.

If for whatever reason you need to create a database the same way syncdb did it there is command flag that causes migrate to work the same way. You should only do this if you REALLY need it and you know what you are doing. For example to create an empty database on for a continuous integration system of your choice.

python manage.py migrate auth
# performs migrations for auth and contenttypes contrib apps

python manage.py migrate --run-syncdb
# creates the rest of the database

Tested on Django 1.9.1.

syncdb is deprecated because of the migration system, introduced with django 1.7.

Now you can track your changes using makemigrations. This transforms your model changes into python code to make them deployable to another databases. When you have further modifications you need applied to the database, you can use data migrations.

After you created the migrations you have to apply them: migrate.

So instead of using syncdb you should use makemigrations and then migrate.

Workflow on development after you changed something in your models:

./manage.py makemigrations
./manage.py migrate

And on your production system:

./manage.py migrate

Bonus: you do not need to run migrate for each change. If you have multiple changes not applied yet django will run them in the correct order for you.