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The Django project has major updates every eight months and minor updates as needed. It's a good idea to keep your project up to date with the latest version or at least a supported version. This keeps your application secure and allows you to use new features like ASGI support, built-in cross-db JSON field, upcoming functional indexes, and more.
With the upcoming Django 3.2 release in mind, this post goes through the general process for updating a Django project.
Patch releases are made available as needed.
These minor releases fix bugs and security issues in the major version. Always upgrade your projects to the latest patch of the major version you are running. It is easy and there is no reason not to do this.
These releases will be 100% compatible with the associated feature release, unless this is impossible for security reasons or to prevent data loss. So the answer to "should I upgrade to the latest patch release?” will always be "yes."
Feature releases are made available every 8 months.
Version 3.2 comes out in April of 2021 and is going to be a long term support (LTS) release.
Every .2 release will be a LTS release starting with 2.2. Prior to 2.2 there LTS releases did not end in .2 (1.11, 1.8, etc).
It is a good idea to keep up with the latest Django version even if it is not a LTS release. You get the latest security enhancements, features, and performance improvements. You also reduce technical debt of upgrading down the road when you are multiple versions behind.
If you are still on Python 2, it's time to jump ship and get on board with Python 3.
The steps to update are the same but first, upgrade to Django 1.11 while staying on Python 2, then switch to Python 3, test, and continue the Django upgrade to the latest version. Django 1.11 is the last Django version to support Python 2 and it is also the beginning of where Django upgrades become very stable.
As with everything this can vary on a project-by-project basis but the simple version is upgrade to Django 1.7, delete any south migrations, generate new initial migrations that match the existing database schema, and then run them. If you are running the new migrations for the first time on Django 1.8 or greater then use the --fake-initial flag.
Once the migrations are finished, continue upgrading Django to the latest version.
First things first, backup your database(s). If the project is small enough then the simplest solution might be to use python manage.py dumpdata and python manage.py loaddata to copy the data from the old database version into a newer database.
For larger projects refer to database specific guides for tools such a pg_upgrade or mysql_upgrade.
Upgrading software can be intimidating but there is no better time to do it than now since it only gets more difficult and insecure down the road. Tools such as source control and Docker help reduce environment differences and lead to a better development/deployment experience. Finally, automated testing is a massive help in preventing errors during regular development and software upgrades.
If you need help keeping your projects up to date reach out to us. We are here to help.