Production reference-data maintenance

For a read-only Country manager, use DEBUG=False and merge READ_ONLY_SYNC_ON_STARTUP=False into existing GENERAL_MANAGER settings, or leave the setting unset to follow DEBUG.

Use one deployment maintenance job:

set -e
python manage.py migrate --noinput
python manage.py sync_read_only --manager your_app.managers.Country

The command includes read-only dependencies. An unknown selector, stale schema or sync failure fails the job. Restarting web processes or running check, shell or collectstatic no longer applies _data automatically in production.

If Country is searchable and its payload changed, and no other manager's search documents depend on those values, mark its configured indexes dirty after sync, then reconcile:

python manage.py shell -c "from your_app.managers import Country; from general_manager.search.reconciliation import mark_search_indexes_dirty; mark_search_indexes_dirty(Country, reason='read_only_deployment')"
python manage.py search_reconcile --once

Replace the manager path with the actual registered path. The marking call must finish before reconciliation. A failed one-shot sweep exits nonzero and leaves the failed pair dirty for repair. If other searchable owners include Country values, dirty those managers too: read-only ORM synchronization does not emit the lifecycle events that trigger related invalidation rules.

Reconcile Meilisearch settings directly

After configuring MeilisearchBackend, callers that own an index can apply its settings directly. Repeating the same call reads the effective settings and submits no redundant settings tasks; changing an ordered list such as searchable_fields or a set-like list such as filterable_fields submits only the affected setting. Identity contracts add gm_identity.* shadow fields only for identity names included in filterable_fields.

import os

from general_manager import MeilisearchBackend


backend = MeilisearchBackend(
    url="http://127.0.0.1:7700",
    api_key=os.environ.get("MEILISEARCH_API_KEY"),
)
settings = {
    "searchable_fields": ["name", "status"],
    "filterable_fields": ["type", "status", "id"],
    "sortable_fields": ["name"],
    "identity_fields": {"Project": {"id": int}},
}

backend.ensure_index("global", settings)
backend.ensure_index("global", settings)  # no settings tasks when unchanged

Omit a searchable, filterable, or sortable setting to leave it unmanaged; pass an explicit empty list to clear it. Ranking rules are always normalized with sort first. Each submitted task completes before the next setting is considered, and a read or task failure propagates so the next invocation can retry.

For deliberate full backend recovery, an operator can select search_reconcile --once --force. This can rebuild every configured pair and remove stale documents; assess its cost before use. search_index --reindex only upserts and cannot substitute for stale-document removal.

See the settings and migration guide for precedence, call_command() usage and consumer adoption notes.