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

1 files changed, 13 insertions, 0 deletions

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