Is this the expected behaviour? Note that all is fine if the field is
changed to auto_now=True instead.

It is possible you've found a bug, but in order to verify that, we
need a minimal example that reproduces the problem - that is, the
simplest possible model and fixture combination that fails on the
second syncdb like you describe.

Yours,
Russ Magee %-)

Here is a simple initial_data.json:-

[
    {
        "model": "posts.entry",
        "pk": 1,
        "fields": {
            "content": "This is the content"
        }
    }
]

And here is my models.py:-

from django.db import models

class Entry(models.Model):
    content = models.CharField(max_length=250)
    pub_date = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True, editable=False)

First time syncdb is run, the fixture is correctly loaded, subsequent
runs result in the aforementioned error. Tested on Django 1.1.1 and
1.2alpha.

Thanks,
Andrew

The cause of the problem is your initial fixture. Django doesn't
listen to auto_now_add or auto_now fields on fixture loading - fixture
objects are saved in "raw" mode, so it is assumed that the fixture
should have data for all the fields. In this case, your fixture is
missing a definition for pub_date, so on the second sync, you are
getting the error I would expect - that the null value in the column
isn't allowed.

However, you should also be getting that error on the first syncdb.
For some reason, the raw mode save isn't preventing the default value
from being initialized. This is a bug, which I've opened as #12753.

Of course, the immediate workaround for you is to include a datetime
in your fixture.

Yours,
Russ Magee %-)

Yours,
Russ Magee %-)

Kind regards,
Andrew