[frankwiles]

Absolutely agree. Even something as simple as adding an optional field is just ./manage.py schemamigration --auto <appname> and you're done vs "ALTER TABLE blah blah blah...." on your local system, dev/staging, and then again on production in the right order, every time, manually. Can't imagine anyone wanting to go back to manual after using South.

[rmrfrmrf]

This thread perfectly exemplifies the frustration laid out in my original post.

[jaegerpicker]

Welcome to development with open source technology. It takes time and effort to figure out the best practices. There is no magic bullet, sorry. That's not meant to be snarky it's just the way the process works.

[collyw]

And use Postgres as the database. If you use MySQL you will get sick of South telling you to use Postgres whenever a migration doesn´t go smoothly.