Django - South - Is There a way to view the SQL it runs?

Question

Here\'s what I want to do.

Develop a Django project on a development server with a development database. Run the south migrations as necessary when I change the model.<

Answer 1

When I need to see the SQL that South generates for debugging or verification I just add the following logging settings to my local_settings.LOGGING.loggers:

    'django.db.backends': {
        'handlers': ['console'],
        'level': 'DEBUG',
    },

This is a complete example of the logging setting for South:

LOGGING = {
    'version': 1,
    'disable_existing_loggers': False,
    'formatters': {
        'verbose': {
            'format': '[%(asctime)s] %(levelname)s %(name)s %(lineno)d "%(message)s"'
        },
        'simple': {
            'format': '%(levelname)s %(message)s'
        },
    },
    'filters': {
        'require_debug_false': {
            '()': 'django.utils.log.RequireDebugFalse'
        }
    },
    'handlers': {
        'console': {
            'level': 'DEBUG',
            'class': 'logging.StreamHandler',
            'formatter': 'verbose',
        },
    },
    'loggers': {
        'django': {
            'handlers': ['console'],
            'level': 'DEBUG',
            'propagate': True,
        },
        'django.db.backends': {
            'handlers': ['console'],
            'level': 'DEBUG',
        },
    }
}

This will output everything including the query that South runs to decide what migrations to run:

[2014-03-12 23:47:31,385] DEBUG django.db.backends 79 "(0.001) SELECT `south_migrationhistory`.`id`, `south_migrationhistory`.`app_name`, `south_migrationhistory`.`migration`, `south_migrationhistory`.`applied` FROM `south_migrationhistory` WHERE `south_migrationhistory`.`applied` IS NOT NULL ORDER BY `south_migrationhistory`.`applied` ASC; args=()"

That and setting verbosity to 2 or 3 is usually more than enough to get a clear picture of what's going on.