makemigrations --check no longer reports pending migrations

[Adam Johnson]

Before #34051 (Django 4.2), you’d use this invocation to check for pending migrations:

$ ./manage.py makemigrations --dry-run --check
Migrations for 'example':
  example/migrations/0002_alter_author_name.py
    - Alter field name on author

$ echo $?
1

The to-be-generated migrations were reported.

#34051 changed so that migratinos aren’t generated when using only --check. But that means, with or without --dry-run, the migration operations are no longer output:

$ ./manage.py makemigrations --dry-run --check

$ echo $?
1

Thus, to see the pending migrations, the only option is to run again without --check and actually write them out. If you run makemigrations --check in CI, a failure requires an extra run, perhaps locally, before you can start to debug.

-v 0 can (and could) always be used to mute the output if desired.

[Adam Johnson]

It seems the output removal was accidental - not discussed on the previous ticket or PR.

[Jacob Walls]

Hi Adam. This was proposed before in #34632 and wontfixed, but I'd be open to reconsidering. #34051 did muse that other commands with --check do a bit of logging, so it doesn't seem inconsistent to me to let makemigrations --check log, too.

Would you be willing to sound this out on the forum?

(There was #34457, too, going further and arguing for a total reversion.)

[Adam Johnson]

Thanks for pointing to the other ticket. Sorry I did not search for it.

I’ve just ​posted on the forum.