why collectstatic won't copy my static files?

Question

I have MyApp/static/MyApp directory

When I run ./manage.py collectstatic, I expect the MyApp directory be copied to STATIC_ROOT but it doesn't

I have DownloadedApp/static/DownloadedApp as well and its copied to STATIC_ROOT fine.

What am I missing?

Answer 1

This happened to me because while investigating a bug occurring on certain dates, changed my computer date and time.

Hence it disturbed things like collectstatic, and also my browser history.

Don't change your computer date and time.

Answer 2

What are the STATIC_ROOT, STATICFILES_FINDERS, and STATICFILES_DIRS in your settings.py?

When collectstatic is run, the default STATICFILES_FINDERS value django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.FileSystemFinder will collect your static files from any paths that you have in STATICFILES_DIRS.

The other default STATICFILES_FINDERS value django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.AppDirectoriesFinder will look in the /static/ folder of any apps in your INSTALLED_APPS.

All of the static files that are found will be placed in the specified STATIC_ROOT directory.

Check out this link to the collectstatic docs

And this link an explanation of the various static settings in settings.py

You can also use python manage.py findstatic to see which directories collectstatic will look in.

Answer 3

I was under the impression the comparison would be content based. It turned out to be date based. So, don't mess with your files after collecstatic.

Answer 4

One Quick work-around, although this does not fix it or explain WHY it's happening, is to:

1. go to your project's file directory & rename your project's 'static' folder to something else like 'static-old'
2. create a new,empty folder called 'static' in your project directory
3. now if you run python manage.py collectstatic it will see that nothing is in your static folder and will copy ALL static files over.

Answer 5

That just happened to me and I accidentally put the app's static files directory in the .gitignore file. So on my local machine it got collected just fine, but in production the static files were actually missing (gitignored).