Description
The concept of pluggable applications has been instrumental in the development of the Django ecosystem and the quality of Django websites. But it's bare- bones: the INSTALLED_APPS setting simply contains a list of Python packages.
In February 2007, Joseph Kocherhans uploaded a patch to allow changing an application's label and providing a verbose name for the admin. The scope of this ticket quickly escalated. Eventually it became known — and feared — as "app-loading".
With every ticket closed as a duplicate, the monster grew stronger and hope faded. Valiant efforts by contributors and core devs cornered the beast into a cave but hardly weakened it. It was finally slain in Django 1.7.
Judging by the releases notes, the results are underwhelming. Worse, they come with an annoying list of backwards-incompatibilites. What was that all about?