Now I understand the issue completely. Let me create a clean patch based on my analysis. The issue is that `manage.py` runs as the `__main__` module, and Python sets `__spec__` to `None` for `__main__` in some cases. The current code in `iter_modules_and_files` skips modules where `__spec__` is `None`, which causes `manage.py` to not be tracked by the autoreloader. The fix is to add special handling for the `__main__` module before the `__spec__` check, extracting the file path from `__file__` directly. --- a/django/utils/autoreload.py +++ b/django/utils/autoreload.py @@ -113,6 +113,12 @@ def iter_modules_and_files(modules, extra_files): sys_file_paths = [] for module in list(modules): + # __main__ (usually manage.py) doesn't have a __spec__ set, so we + # fall back to using __file__. + if getattr(module, '__name__', None) == '__main__': + if hasattr(module, '__file__'): + sys_file_paths.append(module.__file__) + continue if getattr(module, '__spec__', None) is None: continue spec = module.__spec__