Better manage.py: import django after importing settings

[Alexey Kinyov]

Sometimes it may be necessary to use custom versions of libs for certain project. They may be placed to special dir which should be first in sys.path. This dir may be inserted to sys.path at first lines in settings.py

import os
import sys
PROJECT_ROOT = os.path.realpath(os.path.dirname(__file__))
PROJECT_LIBS = os.path.realpath(os.path.join(PROJECT_ROOT, '..', 'lib'))
if not PROJECT_LIBS in sys.path: sys.path.insert(0, PROJECT_LIBS)

But! We can't place custom django to that dir, because manage.py imports django first, then imports settings. It seems, the more preferred way is to import settings first.

#!/usr/bin/env python
try:
    import settings # Assumed to be in the same directory.
except ImportError:
    import sys
    sys.stderr.write("Error: Can't find the file 'settings.py' in the directory containing %r. It appears you've customized things.\nYou'll have to run django-admin.py, passing it your settings module.\n(If the file settings.py does indeed exist, it's causing an ImportError somehow.)\n" % __file__)
    sys.exit(1)

from django.core.management import execute_manager
if __name__ == "__main__":
    execute_manager(settings)

The example above is based on original manage.py, but with one line moved from top to bottom:

from django.core.management import execute_manager

[Russell Keith-Magee]

To my mind, f you need to do sys path modification, the right place to do that isn't settings.py -- it's manage.py itself.

Marking wontfix; if you feel particularly passionate about this, please start a discussion on django-developers.

[Alex Gaynor]

Sometimes it may be necessary to use custom versions of libs for certain project

A solution exists for this. It's called virtualenv.