Django: How to completely uninstall a Django app?

Question

What is the procedure for completely uninstalling a Django app, complete with database removal?

Answer 1

In my context the projects exists several times: I have a development system, some team mates have a development system, there is a staging system for the customer and a production system. This means I don't want to execute sql commands by hand. I want it to be automated.

Goal: Remove the app and all database tables.

Step 1: empty the app, but leave it installed

remove all files from the app, except the folder "migrations"

Execute this command: manage.py makemigrations -n drop_all_tables my_app_to_remove

The directory looks now like this:

my_app_to_remove/
my_app_to_remove/__init__.py
my_app_to_remove/migrations
my_app_to_remove/migrations/0001_initial.py
my_app_to_remove/migrations/....
my_app_to_remove/migrations/0030_drop_all_tables.py
my_app_to_remove/migrations/__init__.py

Leave my_app_to_remove in the file "settings.py".

Step 2: Deploy the changes

Update all projects. Tell the team mates to update their project and to run the migrations.

Step 3: remove "my_app_to_remove" from settings.py

Now remove "my_app_to_remove" from settings.py and deploy again.