[BUG] PyCharm Integration with django-cookiecutter

[urzbs]

Description:

We recently migrated a substantial project to the django-cookiecutter framework. Following this transition, we encountered significant issues with our IDE (PyCharm). Specifically, autocompletion within HTML templates stopped functioning correctly. This affected template tags such as {% include ... %} and {% static ... %}, which has been quite disruptive.

Initially, we mitigated the problem for the {% include ... %} tag by marking template directories as "Template Directories." However, this solution did not resolve issues related to {% static ... %}.

Investigation:

We suspected that our project-specific configurations might be causing these issues. However, upon testing with an empty django-cookiecutter project, we found that the problem persisted. This led us to conclude that PyCharm's Django integration might be struggling to detect the Django structure in projects created with django-cookiecutter.

To pinpoint the issue, we incrementally recreated the cookiecutter setup to observe when PyCharm's integration failed. We identified the following line in local.py as the culprit:

INSTALLED_APPS = ["whitenoise.runserver_nostatic", *INSTALLED_APPS]

It appears that PyCharm is unable to handle the unpacking operation when reading the INSTALLED_APPS list. Therefore leading to "no apps found" PyCharm message.

Solution:

By modifying the INSTALLED_APPS assignment as shown below, PyCharm's Django integration functions correctly, and autocompletion is restored:

INSTALLED_APPS.insert(0, "whitenoise.runserver_nostatic")

This change allows PyCharm to detect the Django structure properly.

Attachments:

Test:

Tested with PyCharm Professional Build #PY-241.18034.82, built on June 24, 2024

This problem has also occured for older versions of PyCharm.

[browniebroke]

That's a weird one. PR to fix welcome.

Out of curiosity, does it work if you modify the installed apps with .append() or with INSTALLED_APPS += [...]? I'm asking as we do that for other apps:

https://github.com/cookiecutter/cookiecutter-django/blob/41b50bcb7d8a50ef71dd19adc4759d99ad7b75a9/%7B%7Bcookiecutter.project_slug%7D%7D/config/settings/local.py#L62

https://github.com/cookiecutter/cookiecutter-django/blob/41b50bcb7d8a50ef71dd19adc4759d99ad7b75a9/%7B%7Bcookiecutter.project_slug%7D%7D/config/settings/local.py#L105

Wondering if that would mess things up or if it's supported?

PS: not suitable for whitenoise as it needs to be before staticfiles, it's more of general question.

[urzbs]

INSTALLED_APPS += ["whitenoise.runserver_nostatic"] works too, but then its not on top of the list. Not sure if it matters.

[browniebroke]

Yes I think it matters for whitenoise, as I said before, the order is important for this app, so your suggestion is better

[foarsitter]

Did you fill in a bug report by jetbrains?