#31180: Deprecate default_app_config
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Reporter: Aymeric Augustin | Owner: nobody
Type: New feature | Status: new
Component: Core (Serialization) | Version: master
Severity: Normal | Keywords:
Triage Stage: Unreviewed | Has patch: 0
Needs documentation: 0 | Needs tests: 0
Patch needs improvement: 0 | Easy pickings: 0
UI/UX: 0 |
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Many pluggable applications are configured with a dotted path to the app
(e.g. `"django.contrib.admin"`) in `INSTALLED_APPS`.
The application then relies on `default_app_config` for locating its
`AppConfig` class (e.g. `"django.contrib.admin.apps.AdminConfig"`).
`default_app_config` was intended to allow author of pluggable
applications to take advantage of `AppConfig` features without require
their users to change `INSTALLED_APPS`, in order to increase adoption.
Unfortunately, that reduced the incentive for directly putting paths to
`AppConfig` in `INSTALLED_APPS`. Even though that was the official
recommendation, it didn't gain traction.
If I had better anticipated this result, I wouldn't have introduced
`default_app_config` in the app-loading refactor in Django 1.7.
We've spent about five years failing at getting people to adopt explicit
configuration. It's time to admit failure. Practicality beats purity.
With the benefit of hindsight, I'm proposing to load `AppConfig` classes
from a conventional location, namely the `apps` submodule inside an
application.
This is inconsistent with Django's design philosophy, as Django favors
configuration over convention, but not much worse than the
`default_app_config` convention.
There's a small risk of backwards-incompatibility. Django could import an
`apps.py` submodule designed for another purpose and that could have side
effects. I think that risk is low.
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Ticket URL: <https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/31180>
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