Make NAV compatible with Django 1.7

[Ole Martin Bjørndalen]

python/nav/web/webfront/views.py uses django.views.generic.direct_to_template which no longer exists in Django 1.5.

Django 1.4 is old, and a new Debian release has been frozen with Django 1.7 in it.

We should target Django 1.7, likely for NAV 4.3, but simultaneous compatibility with version 1.5 and 1.6 is desirable, if at all possible.

[Morten Brekkevold (mbrekkevold)]

I don't think this is the only thing that prevents NAV from running on Django 1.5.

NAV will likely target Django 1.4 for at least another year, basically until Debian 8 comes out. It doesn't hurt if we can write code to be compatible with both Django 1.4 and newer versions, though. It will ease the transition when we get there.

[Ole Martin Bjørndalen (olemb)]

OK.

[Morten Brekkevold (mbrekkevold)]

I've updated the title and description of this bug report. We have decided that we should begin targeting Django 1.7, as the next Debian release will feature this more modern Django version.

Assigning it to Christian, as we have no set deadline for this yet.

Roy Sindre Norangshol has created a pull request where he attempts to make NAV compatible with Django 1.4 through 1.6. It is not complete, and as far as I understand, it will be nearly impossible to keep compatibility with 1.4 as we move towards 1.7.

See https://bitbucket.org/mbrekkevold/nav-mirror/pull-request/94/django-15-and-django-16-fixes/diff

[Peter Gervai (grin)]

Could you kindly offer some progress report on this?

[Morten Brekkevold (mbrekkevold)]

Peter, the current dev branch is here: https://bitbucket.org/lizter/nav-mirror-django-upgrade/commits/branch/django-upgrade

It currently passes our test suite at https://ci.nav.uninett.no, but I'm not sure how far behind trunk it has fallen by now (Christian updates it intermittently).

The branch makes NAV compatible with Django 1.7. It has proven impossible to keep backwards compatibility with older Django versions.

Debian Jessie (the next Debian Stable release) release date has been announced as 25th April. Jessie comes with Django 1.7. This means we will likely merge the django-upgrade branch with trunk in time for the NAV 4.3 release.

[Morten Brekkevold (mbrekkevold)]

fix finally merged here: https://nav.uninett.no/hg/default/rev/32501f30524b

This should make NAV properly compatible with Debian Wheezy - BUT, Django 1.7 was deprecated by the Django dev team this Tuesday. I guess we should target Django 1.9 next, but at least 1.7 will be supported in Debian for a good while still.