django and pdbpp

Quick tips how to enable pdb with django

pdbpp is my favourite debugger, I use integrated IDE for my development, but I still prefer use the command line for most of my daily work. I find Django sometimes cryptic when some error occurs, (ie. data migrations) this simple hack, enables pdb when I need, without install third party packages.

It is possible run python -m pdb manage.py <command> but this has, sometimes, some strange side effects, like continue prompting for restarting, and I loose autocompletion feature (I know, I'm lazy).

In the end I rolled out this custom manage.py.

#!/usr/bin/env python
import os
import sys

if __name__ == '__main__':
    os.environ.setdefault('DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE', 'wfp_commonapi.settings._%s' % os.environ['USER'])
    from django.core.management import execute_from_command_line

    debug_on_error = '--pdb' in sys.argv
    args = [a for a in sys.argv if a != '--pdb']
    try:
        execute_from_command_line(args)
    except:
        if debug_on_error:
            import pdb, traceback
            type, value, tb = sys.exc_info()
            traceback.print_exc()
            pdb.post_mortem(tb)
        else:
            raise

now I can

./manage.py migrate app1 --pdb

and we'll enter in the pdb screen if an error occurs