Configuration should be more forgiving to users who forget the trailing comma.

[mmarshall]

It is really easy for users to forget the trailing comma in configuration settings that should be a tuple, resulting in weird errors. In order to help keep (new) users from getting frustrated, a string should be converted into a tuple for these settings.

Here is a patch to implement this:

Index: django/conf/settings.py
===================================================================
--- django/conf/settings.py     (revision 211)
+++ django/conf/settings.py     (working copy)
@@ -29,9 +29,16 @@
 except ImportError, e:
     raise EnvironmentError, "Could not import DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE '%s' (is it on sys.path?): %s" % (me.SETTINGS_MODULE, e)

+
+# a list of settings that should be converted into tuples if they are strings:
+tuple_settings = ["INSTALLED_APPS","TEMPLATE_DIRS"]
+
 for setting in dir(mod):
     if setting == setting.upper():
-        setattr(me, setting, getattr(mod, setting))
+        setting_value = getattr(mod, setting)
+        if setting in tuple_settings and type(setting_value) == str:
+            setting_value = (setting_value,) #In case the user forgot the comma.
+        setattr(me, setting, setting_value)

 # save DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE in case anyone in the future cares
 me.SETTINGS_MODULE = os.environ.get('DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE', '')

Note that I only put two entries in the tuple_settings list, as they are the only ones I know of. If there are more, they should be added.

[Adrian Holovaty]

Fixed in [213].