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
29324	Change Settings to raise ImproperlyConfigured on SECRET_KEY; not initialization	Jon Dufresne	Florian Apolloner	"Since ticket #17800, initializing settings without a `SECRET_KEY` raises a an `ImproperlyConfigured` during settings initialization.

Instead, I think the error should be raised when the setting is ''accessed'' as `Settings.SECRET_KEY`.

My use case, my project has a number of management commands that run in a non-production, minimally configured environment. These management commands do not require `SECRET_KEY`, however, the environment is forced to provide one.

As a workaround this environment has been generating a random secret key each run. If Django were to instead raise the error on `SECRET_KEY` access, this workaround would not be necessary.
"	Cleanup/optimization	closed	Core (Other)	2.1	Normal	fixed			Ready for checkin	1	0	0	0	0	0