[patch] django-admin.py diffsettings: display differences between project settings and default settings

[pb@…]

Per Adrian's encouragement (​http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers/msg/069f6ed196c7c771), here's some code that does a diff-like operation between the current project's settings.py and Django's default settings.

Example usage: manage.py diffsettings (also works with django-admin.py)

This produces a clean, sorted, comment-free list of the settings that diverge from the defaults. Settings with no corresponding default values are followed by '###'; it seemed like a good idea to highlight "new" settings (including user-created ones), but I also wanted the output of this command to be usable as a settings file -- in theory, you could clean up your settings file by replacing it with the output of this command.

It's modeled after Postfix's "postconf -n", which is often used on the Postfix mailing for troubleshooting.

If this isn't deemed useful, no problem, but I wanted to contribute it just in case. Suggestions for a better command name than "diffsettings" are especially welcome.

[pb@…]

patch to core/management.py

[pb@…]

(Set version to magic-removal)

[pb@…]

(clarification)

[Adrian Holovaty]

Thanks very much for this awesome patch!

[Adrian Holovaty]

(In [2671]) magic-removal: Fixed #1549 -- Added 'manage.py diffsettings', which displays differences between project settings and default settings. Thanks, Paul B.

[Petar Marić <petar.maric@…>]

Doesn't work for me.

$ python manage.py diffsettings
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "manage.py", line 11, in ?
    execute_manager(settings)
  File "/home/userX/django_src/django/core/management.py", line 1212, in execute_manager
    execute_from_command_line(action_mapping)
  File "/home/userX/django_src/django/core/management.py", line 1134, in execute_from_command_line
    action_mapping[action]()
  File "/home/userX/django_src/django/core/management.py", line 535, in diffsettings
    for key in sorted(user_settings):
NameError: global name 'sorted' is not defined

[hugo]

Hmm. sounds like some python2.4-ism

[pb@…]

Python 2.3 compatible version

[pb@…]

Hugo's correct, sorry about that. Uploaded a fix (and made the imports a one-liner).

Also, it's note that django.conf.init changes the INSTALLED_APPS tuple to a list -- that's bound to confuse someone. Maybe add a note to the docstring?

[Adrian Holovaty]

(In [2674]) magic-removal: Fixed #1549 -- Removed Python 2.4ism introduced in [2671]