Opened 4 years ago

Closed 4 years ago

#31387 closed Uncategorized (invalid)

Document BASE_DIR setting.

Reported by: Eric Baumgartner Owned by: nobody
Component: Documentation Version: 3.0
Severity: Normal Keywords:
Cc: Triage Stage: Unreviewed
Has patch: no Needs documentation: no
Needs tests: no Patch needs improvement: no
Easy pickings: no UI/UX: no

Description

BASE_DIR appears to be an established setting. The default startapp template defines it.

https://github.com/django/django/blob/master/django/conf/project_template/project_name/settings.py-tpl

And third-party apps like django_extensions rely on BASE_DIR being set.

However, the main settings documentation page does not mention BASE_DIR at all.

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/ref/settings/

This led to confusion in the following case:

  • Working with a legacy project that started around django 0.9.6 and has never defined BASE_DIR, to no apparent ill effect.
  • While using django_extensions, an exception is raised ('Settings' object has no attribute 'BASE_DIR').
  • Think: "Ok, that's fine, just need to define it, it's probably a newer setting."
  • Go to django docs to see the definition of BASE_DIR. Find nothing!
  • Now confused. Is BASE_DIR unofficial? Why is django_extensions relying on a non-standard setting?

It would be nice if BASE_DIR could be added to the settings documentation to resolve this confusion.

Change History (1)

comment:1 by Mariusz Felisiak, 4 years ago

Resolution: invalid
Status: newclosed
Summary: Document BASE_DIR settingDocument BASE_DIR setting.

BASE_DIR is not a setting. It's a constant set and used only by a default settings.py template.

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