settings/__init__.py is going to cause problems

[dpoirier]

This code in settings/init.py:

from .base import *
try:
from .local import *
except ImportError, exc:
exc.args = tuple(['%s (did you rename settings/local.py-dist?)' % exc.args[0]])
raise exc

will cause problems anytime you try to specify another settings module. E.g. if you set DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=projectname.settings.staging, then in the course of loading the projectname.settings.staging module, Python will load projectname/settings/init.py, and suddenly unexpected and probably unwanted settings modules are being loaded.

An alternative that seems to work better is to move this code into projectname/settings/default.py and make the default settings module point to that. Then if someone overrides the settings module, the default code never gets loaded.

[peterbe]

In other words, let's get out of __init__.py.
But by default, Django will load settings if you don't specify anything, right? So, if you run ./manage.py runserver how can we tell it to load settings.default instead? A default in manage.py?

[dpoirier]

Right, you just change the defaults in manage.py, and I think in the wsgi file as well, from ...settings to ...settings.default.