Django cannot makemigrations for a nested app

Question

I am trying to create a nested app in my django project, but makemigrations is not detecting it. I have the following directory structure:

myproject/
├── db.sqlite3
├── manage.py
├── myproject
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── settings.py
│   ├── urls.py
│   └── wsgi.py
└── parentapp
    ├── admin.py
    ├── apps.py
    ├── childapp
    │   ├── admin.py
    │   ├── apps.py
    │   ├── __init__.py
    │   ├── migrations
    │   │   └── __init__.py
    │   ├── models.py
    │   ├── tests.py
    │   └── views.py
    ├── __init__.py
    ├── migrations
    │   └── __init__.py
    ├── models.py
    ├── tests.py
    └── views.py

And here is some relevant code:

myproject/myproject/settings.py:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'parentapp',
    'parentapp.childapp',
]

myproject/parentapp/childapp/__init__.py:

default_app_config = "parentapp.childapp.apps.ChildAppConfig"

myproject/parentapp/childapp/apps.py:

from django.apps import AppConfig

class ChildAppConfig(AppConfig):
    name = 'parentapp.childapp'

myproject/parentapp/childapp/models.py:

from django.db import models

class Child(models.Model):

    class Meta:
        app_label = "parentapp.childapp"

    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)

I see the following behavior when trying to make migrations:

$ myproject/manage.py makemigrations
No changes detected

$ myproject/manage.py makemigrations childapp
No changes detected in app 'childapp'

$ myproject/manage.py makemigrations parentapp.childapp
'parentapp.childapp' is not a valid app label.  Did you mean 'childapp'?

What am I doing wrong? I see loads of other reusable apps that have nested apps (django-allauth, for example).

Answer 1

You need to remove the app_label from Child.Meta or to change it to a compatible app name (no ".", lowercase and underscore).