id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	component	version	severity	resolution	keywords	cc	stage	has_patch	needs_docs	needs_tests	needs_better_patch	easy	ui_ux
25034	Remove attempts to access settings at import time	David Evans	nobody	"There are currently two places (that I can find) in Django where settings are read at import time:
1. [https://github.com/django/django/blob/ec4f219ecb7a5e43d0353633fac4dac42d0ee492/django/core/cache/__init__.py#L32 django/django/core/cache/__init__.py]
2. [https://github.com/django/django/blob/ec4f219ecb7a5e43d0353633fac4dac42d0ee492/django/contrib/staticfiles/urls.py#L17 django/django/contrib/staticfiles/urls.py]

Case 1 is causing some people confusion when attempting to import things in `wsgi.py`, as the import breaks if it comes before `DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE` is defined. See for example: [https://github.com/evansd/whitenoise/issues/31#issuecomment-104185649]

This check also seems a bit superfluous as failing to define a default cache backend will trigger an `InvalidCacheBackendError` when attempting to access it. It's not clear that triggering `ImproperlyConfigured` on import adds much here.

Case 2 is bit strange as I can't find anywhere that actually uses this `urls.py` file. Is it possible that it was just left in place and is now redundant?

If we could remove these two cases then we have the simple rule that settings are not to be accessed at import time, and we won't have any subtle import-order requirements. "	Cleanup/optimization	new	Uncategorized	dev	Normal				Unreviewed	0	0	0	0	0	0