Django: How to manage development and production settings?

The DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE environment variable controls which settings file Django will load.

You therefore create separate configuration files for your respective environments (note that they can of course both import * from a separate, "shared settings" file), and use DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE to control which one to use.

Here's how:

As noted in the Django documentation:

The value of DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE should be in Python path syntax, e.g. mysite.settings. Note that the settings module should be on the Python import search path.

So, let's assume you created myapp/production_settings.py and myapp/test_settings.py in your source repository.

In that case, you'd respectively set DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=myapp.production_settings to use the former and DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=myapp.test_settings to use the latter.

From here on out, the problem boils down to setting the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE environment variable.

Setting DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE using a script or a shell

You can then use a bootstrap script or a process manager to load the correct settings (by setting the environment), or just run it from your shell before starting Django: export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=myapp.production_settings.

Note that you can run this export at any time from a shell — it does not need to live in your .bashrc or anything.

Setting DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE using a Process Manager

If you're not fond of writing a bootstrap script that sets the environment (and there are very good reasons to feel that way!), I would recommend using a process manager:

• Supervisor lets you pass environment variables to managed processes using a program's environment configuration key.
• Honcho (a pure-Python equivalent of Ruby's Foreman) lets you define environment variables in an "environment" (.env) file.

Finally, note that you can take advantage of the PYTHONPATH variable to store the settings in a completely different location (e.g. on a production server, storing them in /etc/). This allows for separating configuration from application files. You may or may not want that, it depends on how your app is structured.

By default use production settings, but create a file called settings_dev.py in the same folder as your settings.py file. Add overrides there, such as DEBUG=True.

On the computer that will be used for development, add this to your ~/.bashrc file:

export DJANGO_DEVELOPMENT=true

Or turn it on one time by prefixing your command:

DJANGO_DEVELOPMENT=true python manage.py runserver

At the bottom of your settings.py file, add the following.

# Override production variables if DJANGO_DEVELOPMENT env variable is true
if os.getenv('DJANGO_DEVELOPMENT') == 'true':
    from settings_dev import *  # or specific overrides

(Note that importing * should generally be avoided in Python)

By default the production servers will not override anything. Done!

Compared to the other answers, this one is simpler because it doesn't require updating PYTHONPATH, or setting DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE which only allows you to work on one django project at a time.

I usually have one settings file per environment, and a shared settings file:

/myproject/
  settings.production.py
  settings.development.py
  shared_settings.py

Each of my environment files has:

try:
    from shared_settings import *
except ImportError:
    pass

This allows me to override shared settings if necessary (by adding the modifications below that stanza).

I then select which settings files to use by linking it in to settings.py:

ln -s settings.development.py settings.py

I use the awesome django-configurations, and all the settings are stored in my settings.py:

from configurations import Configuration

class Base(Configuration):
    # all the base settings here...
    BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))
    ...

class Develop(Base):
    # development settings here...
    DEBUG = True 
    ...

class Production(Base):
    # production settings here...
    DEBUG = False

To configure the Django project I just followed the docs.