Migrations[0] are being included in Django 1.7 which is currently under development. For those unaware, Andrew Godwin, the author of South, ran a successful Kickstarter campaign[1] the fund this effort to incorporate migrations in Django core.

[0] https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/migrations/

[1] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andrewgodwin/schema-migr...

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/migrations/

Andrew has significantly rethought migrations and applied the lessons he's learned from years of maintaining and developing South.

He's kept a developer diary that has been pretty fascinating to read (YMMV):

http://www.aeracode.org/2013/11/27/new-apps-migrations/

and others at:

http://www.aeracode.org/category/django-diaries/

[update: route3 is faster than me, but still it's worth checking out the developer diaries]