Updating a Django project from 1.2 to 1.3, manage.py not working properly

Question

I decided I wanted to update my Django 1.2 project to Django 1.3 to take advantage of the new static files mechanisms. I deleted my old version of Django, and followed the documentation's instructions for installing the development version from svn.

The changes seem to have taken. That is, python -c "import django; print django.get_version()" yields "1.3 alpha 1 SVN-14686". Yet, I can't seem to take advantage of 1.3 features in my old project. If I do "python manage.py collectstatic --help" I get "Unknown command: 'collectstatic'".

I tried creating a fresh project and doing the same thing, and the collectstatic command worked. I dug into django.core.management, but can't really make a lot of sense of it. The docstring for get_commands() mentions:

The dictionary is cached on the first call and reused on subsequent calls.

Maybe this is totally irrelevant, but I wonder if my problem has something to do with caching (that is, an old version of the command dictionary is cached, which doesn't have the new 1.3 commands?). Any thoughts?

Answer 1

In order to use a management command, you need to add the application that provides it to INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py. From the docs:

First, you’ll need to make sure that django.contrib.staticfiles is in your INSTALLED_APPS.

That should make the command available.