Question

I’m pretty new to doing sysadmin stuff for my development and to the django framework. I want to have a different username/password for my local dev station and to my production environment.

I’m using dotcloud as the server. I can write a post install script (in python, bash, whatever) and it will execute it on every new push.

However I don’t know how to go about this. Do I need to write this myself? is there a python/django build automation tools that will help me with that?

Clarification: how can I change debug=false in settings.py to true just on the server?

Answer 1

I usually import my development settings at the end of production settings.py, if my project is residing on a local directory structure.

You can also store your DB settings and other settings that are different in production and development in a separate file and remove them from your SVN, Git of whatever you use.

Just add this at the end of your settings.py:

try:
  from myapp.specific_settings import *
except ImportError:
  pass

In this case, specific_settings will be different in production and development environment.

If you want to dynamically choose between development and production servers use this at the end of settings:

import os
directory = os.path.dirname(__file__)
if directory == '/home/yourname/development/':
    from myapp.development_settings import *
else:
    from myapp.production_settings import * 

Note that I wrote this on top of my head and there might be some bugs in it. I will verify that when I go home.