Have mercy please!

[Jon Foster]

I've been involved with Django, on and off, since v0.96 or so. I love Django and think its the most productive way to build rich websites with custom defined content types. Throw in Django-CMS and things get pretty darn cool.

I was thrilled when Django reached v1.0 since it came with the promise of having a consistent and stable API, specifically a lack of backwards incompatible changes, unless required by security concerns. Unfortunately this promise is routinely violated for various excuses. The bottom line is none of the apps I've written have been able to survive any 2 point upgrades (v+0.2). Single point upgrades usually only cause minor breakage.

I realize the desire to grow things and I applaud it. But there is a business issue here. I can't, in good conscience recommend Django as a site platform to many of my small clients as they simply could not afford the upkeep of a Django powered site. Especially if the site is e-commerce related, where PCI, and responsible site operation, will require that we stay current. In order to do so would require staying up with the constant flow of backwards incompatible changes, combined with the time and effort to reverse engineer and maintain contributed apps, which aren't keeping pace either.

With the current method of development on the Django platform, if I had just a dozen sites of moderate complexity, it would become a full time job just keeping them updated. Its complicated enough just finding the apps that will actually work with each other to construct a site. But the carefully constructed house of cards is virtually guaranteed to break with the next update.

So I ask, PLEASE return to and stick with the promise of API stability? You promised and routinely point to that statement, while making backwards incompatible changes. I want to spend more time working with Django, but I need to know that my clients can rely on painless and cost effective upgrades.

Thanks for reading my complaint,
Jon

[Tim Graham]

Hi Jon,

Please see a recent discussion on django-developers with similar complaints:
https://groups.google.com/d/topic/django-developers/WKpkv1hdVWU/discussion

There is also discussion on django-developers about revising the deprecation schedule to make it easier to upgrade from one LTS release to another:
https://groups.google.com/d/topic/django-developers/MTvOPDNQXLI/discussion

If you have any other actionable suggestions, feel free to add them to either thread.

Thanks,
Tim

[Carl Meyer]

Hi Jon,

Thanks for sharing your experience.

On 06/09/2015 07:25 PM, Jon Foster wrote:
> I've been involved with Django, on and off, since v0.96 or so. I love
> Django and think its the most productive way to build rich websites with
> custom defined content types. Throw in Django-CMS and things get pretty
> darn cool.
>
> I was thrilled when Django reached v1.0 since it came with the promise
> of having a consistent and stable API, specifically a lack of backwards
> incompatible changes, unless required by security concerns.
> Unfortunately this promise is routinely violated for various excuses.
> The bottom line is none of the apps I've written have been able to
> survive any 2 point upgrades (v+0.2). Single point upgrades usually only
> cause minor breakage.

This last confuses me, so I'd like to get clarity. If "single point
upgrades usually only cause minor breakage", then a two point upgrade is
just two single point upgrades, one after the other, correct?

Trying to upgrade directly from e.g. 1.6 to 1.8 without first going
through 1.7 - by which I mean "having a fully working site that passes
its tests with no deprecation warnings in 1.7" -- is definitely not
recommended.

So is the problem here that you've been trying to do a two-version
upgrade directly, instead of version-by-version? Or that "upgrade with
minor breakage" + "upgrade with minor breakage" = "too much for the
project to survive"?

> I realize the desire to grow things and I applaud it. But there is a
> business issue here. I can't, in good conscience recommend Django as a
> site platform to many of my small clients as they simply could not
> afford the upkeep of a Django powered site. Especially if the site is
> e-commerce related, where PCI, and responsible site operation, will
> require that we stay current. In order to do so would require staying up
> with the constant flow of backwards incompatible changes, combined with
> the time and effort to reverse engineer and maintain contributed apps,
> which aren't keeping pace either.
>
> With the current method of development on the Django platform, if I had
> just a dozen sites of moderate complexity, it would become a full time
> job just keeping them updated. Its complicated enough just finding the
> apps that will actually work with each other to construct a site. But
> the carefully constructed house of cards is virtually guaranteed to
> break with the next update.
>
> So I ask, PLEASE return to and stick with the promise of API stability?
> You promised and routinely point to that statement, while making
> backwards incompatible changes. I want to spend more time working with
> Django, but I need to know that my clients can rely on painless and cost
> effective upgrades.
>
> Thanks for reading my complaint,
> Jon
>

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