[Fixed]-Newbie difficulty using south with pycharm – DatabaseError: no such table: south_migrationhistory

South uses a table if its own to keep track of which migrations have been applied. Before you can apply any migrations, this must have been created, using python ./manage.py syncdb.

As well as for setting up south, you will find syncdb sometimes necessary for non-south apps in your project, such as the very common django.contrib.auth.

Note that as a convenience, you can run both in one go like this

python ./manage.py syncdb --migrate

My latest (unsuccessful) effort was the following

1. Create application – synch db – superuser created
2. Test run –admin screen shows basic tables
3. Add south, and syncdb from command line with manage.py syncdb – south_migrationhistory table created. Add basic vanilla model
4. Tried various combinations of manage.py syncdb –manage, and
   schemamigration from Pycharm (if run from within pycharm a
   migrations directory is created within the app
   – if run from the command line the directory does not seem to be
   created.)
5. Django admin screen shows table – but if I try to edit
   the table it says that it doesn’t exist
6. Check database structure
   using SQLite browser – table for newly created model doesn’t exist

I’m starting to think that the whole thing is not worth the time wasting hassle – maybe I’m better off just modifying the tables in SQLite browser

Answer in the similar question:

Run syncdb to add the Django and South tables to the database.