Setting up a brand new project and no database

  1. create your database

  2. add south to installed apps

  3. run syncdb, this will add the django and south tables to the database

  4. add your apps

  5. for each app run python manage.py schemamigration app_name --initial this will create the initial migration files for your app

  6. then run south migrate python manage.py migrate app_name this will add the tables to the database.

Setting up a legacy project and database

  1. add south to installed apps

  2. run syncdb, this will add the south tables to the database

  3. for each of your apps run python manage.py schemamigration app_name --initial This will create your initial migrations

  4. for each of your apps run python manage.py migrate app_name 0001 --fake , this will fake out south, it won't do anything to the database for those models, it will just add records to the south_migrationhistory table so that the next time you want to create a migration, you are all set.

Setting up a legacy project and no database

  1. create database

  2. add south to installed apps

  3. for each of your apps run python manage.py schemamigration app_name --initial This will create your initial migrations

  4. run syncdb, this will add any apps that don't have migrations to the database.

  5. then run south migrate python manage.py migrate this will run all migrations for your apps.