PROJECT_ROOT ought to be in the generated project settings module

[Daniel Greenfeld]

I see this used by a lot of people in a lot of projects. For experience developers they figure it out on their own. Beginning developers often miss it and hard code all their paths. This becomes a problem on deployment.

import os.path
PROJECT_ROOT = os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__))

Possible alternative solution: Add this to an as-of-yet Django best practices page.

[Chris Beaven]

Minor irony here, this is an incorrect example: you want to ensure you abspath before you dirname.

This could potentially just be a documentation note rather than part of the default generated settings module.
Perhaps you could bring this up on django-dev, Danny?

[Aymeric Augustin]

Sorry to slow down your enthusiasm, but:

• design decision needed means a core developer must accept or reject the idea; only a core developer can move a ticket from DDN to Accepted,
• the patch must be reviewed by someone else before it can be marked as ready for checkin,
• the patch can't be ready for checkin if it needs docs and tests.

See ​https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/internals/contributing/triaging-tickets/ for more information about this process.

Regarding the patch itself:

• You inserted an import between a comment and the line that is commented, so the comment no longer makes sense,
• I don't understand why you set PROJECT_PATH to django/conf by default.

[rvanhoepen]

Mmm... I understand... Sorry, I'm new to all of this :)

EDIT:
Updated to take PROJECT_ROOT out of django/conf/global_settings.py,
and uncommented it in django/conf/project_template/settings.py

[Aymeric Augustin]

With this addition, we could provide more sensible defaults: MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(PROJECT_ROOT, 'media') and STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(PROJECT_ROOT, 'static').

This would have prevented #16703.

[Jannis Leidel]

FTR, this has been proposed before and proven to be counter-productive. The "project" metaphor is only temporary and shouldn't be fortified in yet another setting.

[Jacob]

Milestone 1.4 deleted

[mightyiam]

I came here following https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/19410, which is about an absolute path in the tutorial in the sqlite db filename.

I'm new to all of this and no where near design decisions.

But I would like to make a point that in the case of sqlite, relative url is very comfortable.

Thanks,
Shahar

[Aymeric Augustin]

The latest iteration of the default settings file created by startproject includes BASE_DIR, which is essentially the same as PROJECT_DIR, except the name is semantically correct.