Fixed #16247 -- Removed wildcard expansion of application names in INSTALLED_APPS.

git-svn-id: http://code.djangoproject.com/svn/django/trunk@17158 bcc190cf-cafb-0310-a4f2-bffc1f526a37

2 files changed, 13 insertions, 17 deletions

diff --git a/django/conf/__init__.py b/django/conf/__init__.py
index 3b829ce75b..8fff20248f 100644
--- a/django/conf/__init__.py
+++ b/django/conf/__init__.py
@@ -102,23 +102,6 @@ class Settings(BaseSettings):
                     setting_value = (setting_value,) # In case the user forgot the comma.
                 setattr(self, setting, setting_value)
 
-        # Expand entries in INSTALLED_APPS like "django.contrib.*" to a list
-        # of all those apps.
-        new_installed_apps = []
-        for app in self.INSTALLED_APPS:
-            if app.endswith('.*'):
-                app_mod = importlib.import_module(app[:-2])
-                appdir = os.path.dirname(app_mod.__file__)
-                app_subdirs = os.listdir(appdir)
-                app_subdirs.sort()
-                name_pattern = re.compile(r'[a-zA-Z]\w*')
-                for d in app_subdirs:
-                    if name_pattern.match(d) and os.path.isdir(os.path.join(appdir, d)):
-                        new_installed_apps.append('%s.%s' % (app[:-2], d))
-            else:
-                new_installed_apps.append(app)
-        self.INSTALLED_APPS = new_installed_apps
-
         if hasattr(time, 'tzset') and self.TIME_ZONE:
             # When we can, attempt to validate the timezone. If we can't find
             # this file, no check happens and it's harmless.
diff --git a/docs/releases/1.4.txt b/docs/releases/1.4.txt
index 10cbe3dba9..ea7038430c 100644
--- a/docs/releases/1.4.txt
+++ b/docs/releases/1.4.txt
@@ -953,3 +953,16 @@ Session cookies now include the ``httponly`` attribute by default to
 help reduce the impact of potential XSS attacks. For strict backwards
 compatibility, use ``SESSION_COOKIE_HTTPONLY = False`` in settings.
 
+Wildcard expansion of application names in `INSTALLED_APPS`
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Until Django 1.3, :setting:`INSTALLED_APPS` accepted wildcards in application
+names, like ``django.contrib.*``. The expansion was performed by a
+filesystem-based implementation of ``from <package> import *``. Unfortunately,
+`this can't be done reliably`_.
+
+This behavior was never documented. Since it is un-pythonic and not obviously
+useful, it was removed in Django 1.4. If you relied on it, you must edit your
+settings file to list all your applications explicitly.
+
+.. _this can't be done reliably: http://docs.python.org/tutorial/modules.html#importing-from-a-package