InvalidBasesError: Cannot resolve bases for [<ModelState: 'users.GroupProxy'>]

Have you tried running manage.py makemigrations <app_label> on your app before running tests?

Also, check if the app which model(s) you are trying to Proxy is included in your INSTALLED_APPS.

If this is only happening when running python manage.py test (maybe because you have already made the necessary migrations), you should explicitly say that contrib.auth should not migrate in the MIGRATION_MODULES of your settings module.

MIGRATION_MODULES(
        'auth': "contrib.auth.migrations_not_used_in_tests",
)

I’ve come across this issue, and as commenting out the model isn’t really a solution, I’ve found that setting the undocumented auto_created = True to the Meta class will make Django ignore it.

class GroupProxy(Group):

    class Meta:
        proxy = True
        auto_created = True

I had this problem after I renamed the parent table of a bunch of my proxy models. I resolved it by:

1. Deleting the migration file that had the name change for the parent table.
2. Using the postgres terminal, I renamed the parent table to its previous name.
3. Ran makemigrations and migrate again

Simply creating a migrations directory at the root of your app (so users/migrations/ in your case) and adding an empty __init__.py file might resolve your issue. At least it did for me when I was getting the same error.

But you’re better off running makemigrations for your app, as suggested by
@zenofewords above. That will create the directory for you AND generate migrations for your proxy models.

Why does Django create migration files for proxy models?

Your tests are looking for those migrations and aren’t finding them.

I also faced this issue (after doing some complex model inheritance). One of my migrations contained

migrations.CreateModel(
    name='Offer',
    fields=[
        # ...
    ],
    options={
        # ...
    },
    bases=('shop.entity',),
),

I deleted shop.Entity model entirely, but the migration was referencing it in bases attribute. So I just deleted bases=('shop.entity',) and it works. It will probably break an opportunity to migrate from the beginning, but at least allows to migrate further on.

Another advice would be: go directly to django code and inspect what’s causing “bases” trouble. Go to django/db/migrations/state.py and add a breakpoint:

try:
    bases = tuple(
        (apps.get_model(base) if isinstance(base, six.string_types) else base)
        for base in self.bases
    )
except LookupError:
    print(self.bases)  # <-- print the bases
    import ipdb; ipdb.set_trace()  # <-- debug here
    raise InvalidBasesError("Cannot resolve one or more bases from %r" % (self.bases,))

Having spent the majority of this afternoon trying to solve this error myself, going through every conceivable mixture of ‘commenting out apps’, ‘dropping tables’ and dropping entire databases I found that my issue was caused by a simple lack of a ‘migrations’ folder and an __ init__.py file inside of said folder.

One of the older answers which was correct is now no longer correct as they have fixed the issue mentioned here.

Check every directory that contains the model mentioned in ‘init.py’ and it should go away.

Probably won’t solve everyone’s case but it helped mine.

One possibility is that the deleting or creating of a model in the migration file is in the wrong order. I experienced this in Django 1.7.8 when the base model was BEFORE the derived model. Swapping the order for deleting the model fixed the issue.

happened to me with no other app – just because I renamed a model which was a base for other models (and maybe created that sub-models within the same migration) renaming the super-model to it’s original name solved it for me

I faced the same issue and adding app_label attribute in class Meta: solved the error :

class GroupProxy(Group):
    class Meta:
        proxy = True
        app_label = '<app in which you want this model>'
        verbose_name = Group._meta.verbose_name
        verbose_name_plural = Group._meta.verbose_name_plural

If this occurs to you in an app that already has a migrations folder (and a init.py file in it), delete all other files, and run makemigrations and migrate again.

P.S.: You may need to reconfigure your models.py or some tables in your database manually.

Just incase anyone made the same mistake as me, I had the same issue because I hadn’t made any migrations for the Proxy models. It didn’t seem necessary to me as they don’t have their own DB tables and I didn’t see anything mentioning this in the docs. python manage.py makemigrations <APP_NAME> fixed it right up.

add a folder named "migrations" and in this folder create "__init__.py" file

There’s a related question. See my answer here https://stackoverflow.com/a/67500550/502045

TL;DR

Create your own operation to remove bases

class RemoveModelBasesOptions(ModelOptionOperation):
    def __init__(self, name):
        super().__init__(name)

    def deconstruct(self):
        kwargs = {
            'name': self.name,
        }
        return (
            self.__class__.__qualname__,
            [],
            kwargs
        )

    def state_forwards(self, app_label, state):
        model_state = state.models[app_label, self.name_lower]
        model_state.bases = (models.Model,)
        state.reload_model(app_label, self.name_lower, delay=True)

    def database_forwards(self, app_label, schema_editor, from_state,
                          to_state):
        pass

    def database_backwards(self, app_label, schema_editor, from_state,
                           to_state):
        pass

    def describe(self):
        return "Remove bases from the model %s" % self.name

    @property
    def migration_name_fragment(self):
        return 'remove_%s_bases' % self.name_lower

You may have to run makemigrations for the apps without migrations.

In my case django_quiz depends on multichoice, true_false and essay.

I had to makemigrations for each of these before I could migrate django_quiz.