[orf]

Django doesn’t create database connections on import. That would be madness.

It does create an object that can (lazily) connect to the database, so it needs the required database drivers installed. It also needs the required information about _how_ to connect to the database, so it needs the settings loaded.

That's why you need to use `django.setup()` before, to tell it what settings to load. You should never be importing random Django models without this configured, simply because they cannot be used and will not work. We think an exception saying "don't do this, call django.setup()" is less confusing at import time is than "Databases not configured" at runtime. Not that it would even reach that, because you might be using a field from a third party application that needs to be initialized (i.e INSTALLED_APPS configured) or that relies on a configured settings (maybe an encrypted field that needs your SECRET_KEY available).

Stop making it hard, just write a management command. It's super easy.