App Maintenance

Adding Apps

Your auth project is just a regular Django project - you can add in other Django apps as desired. Most come with dedicated setup guides, but here is the general procedure:

Add 'appname', to INSTALLED_APPS setting in local.py
Run Migrations python manage.py migrate
Collect Static Files python manage.py collectstatic --noinput
Restart our Web Service and Workers supervisorctl restart myauth:

Add 'appname', to INSTALLED_APPS setting in local.py
Restart our Web Service and Workers docker compose --env-file=.env up -d
Enter a Docker Container docker compose exec allianceauth_gunicorn bash
Run Migrations auth migrate
Collect Static Files auth collectstatic

Removing Apps

The following instructions will explain how you can remove an app properly from your Alliance Auth installation.

Note

We recommend following these instructions to avoid dangling foreign keys or orphaned Python packages on your system, which might cause conflicts with other apps down the road.

Step 1 - Removing database tables

First, we want to remove the app related tables from the database.

Automatic table removal

Let’s first try the automatic approach by running the following command:

python manage.py migrate appname zero

docker compose exec allianceauth_gunicorn bash
auth migrate appname zero

If that works, you’ll get a confirmation message.

If that did not work, and you got error messages, you will need to remove the tables manually.

This is pretty common, because many apps use sophisticated table setups, which cannot be removed automatically by Django.

Manual table removal

First, tell Django that these migrations are no longer in effect (note the additional --fake):

python manage.py appname zero --fake

Then, open the mysql tool and connect to your Alliance Auth database:

sudo mysql -u root
use alliance_auth;

Next, disable foreign key check. This makes it much easier to drop tables in any order.

SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0;

Then get a list of all tables. All tables belonging to the app in question will start with appname_.

show tables;

Now, drop the tables from the app one by one like so:

drop table appname_model_1;
drop table appname_model_2;
...

And finally, but very importantly, re-enable foreign key checks again and then exit:

SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=1;
exit;

First, tell Django that these migrations are no longer in effect (note the additional --fake):

auth migrate appname zero --fake

Here we need to swap containers, if you are still inside allianceauth_gunicorn, exit with exit

docker compose exec auth_mysql bash
sudo mysql -u root
use alliance_auth;

Next, disable foreign key check. This makes it much easier to drop tables in any order.

SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0;

Then get a list of all tables. All tables belonging to the app in question will start with appname_.

show tables;

Now, drop the tables from the app one by one like so:

drop table appname_model_1;
drop table appname_model_2;
...

And finally, but very importantly, re-enable foreign key checks again and then exit:

SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=1;
exit;

Step 2 - Remove the app from Alliance Auth

Once the tables have been removed, you can remove the app from Alliance Auth. This is done by removing the applabel from the INSTALLED_APPS list in your local settings file.

Step 3 - Remove the Python package

Finally, we want to remove the app’s Python package. For that run the following command:

pip uninstall app-package-name

Congrats, you have now removed this app from your Alliance Auth installation.

Permission Cleanup

Mature Alliance Auth installations, or those with actively developed extensions may find themselves with stale or duplicated Permission models.

This can make it confusing for admins to apply the right permissions, contribute to larger queries in backend management or simply look unsightly.

python manage.py remove_stale_contenttypes --include-stale-apps

This inbuilt Django command will step through each contenttype and offer to delete it, displaying what exactly this will cascade to delete. Pay attention and ensure you understand exactly what is being removed before answering yes.

This should only clean up uninstalled apps, deprecated permissions within apps should be cleaned up using Data Migrations by each responsible application.