Remove all magical settings

[FrancoisConstant]

EXAMPLE OF MAGICAL SETTING (just an example):

This morning, on a project, I had to add this to my settings to get the tests running locally:

NOSE_ARGS = [a for a in NOSE_ARGS if a not in ('--with-progressive',)]

That was to remove a setting that was NOT in my codebase.

It comes from ixc-django-docker:

the-project/src/ixc-django-docker/ixc_django_docker/settings/nose.py

import sys

INSTALLED_APPS += ('django_nose', )

NOSE_ARGS = (
    '--logging-clear-handlers',  # Clear all other logging handlers
    '--nocapture',  # Don't capture stdout
    '--nologcapture',  # Disable logging capture plugin
    # '--processes=-1',  # Automatically set to the number of cores
)

if sys.stdout.isatty():
    NOSE_ARGS += ('--with-progressive', )  # See https://github.com/erikrose/nose-progressive

TEST_RUNNER = 'django_nose.NoseTestSuiteRunner'  # Default: django.test.runner.DiscoverRunner

nose.py code is NOT imported in the project code. I knew I had to look at ixc-django-docker but it's not obvious and it takes extra time to figure out what the setting is. I don't remember all the particular cases but finding or searching settings is always a pain when it shouldn't be. Also with the magic, you cannot "navigate" the file properly in an IDE - i.e. settinsg like CELERYBEAT_SCHEDULE show up as errors in the IDE (not imported) and you cannot click on it to reveal its default content.

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This situation often happens: something doesn't work or behave the way we expect because of a setting which isn't in our codebase (so we miss it). It's not even imported in the-project/settings.py. It's magically added in.

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I would rather have from ixc_django_docker.settings.nose import * at the top of the-project/settings/settings.py than the currently magical behaviour.

Alternatively (I think @jmurty suggested that), having no import and a just big setting file would work well too.

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@mrmachine @Aramgutang @aweakley @jacobcolyvan @joaquinpunales1992 @rushil02 @tpmac1990
Does removing magic from settings import make sense to everybody? Is that fairly easy to achieve? I'm happy to pair up with someone to get this right.

[FrancoisConstant]

@mrmachine there is a comment here from you #10 (comment)

and I'm not convinced that where I ended up was any better...

Can you expend on this? I know your message was from 5 years ago :D

Any second thoughts? Any change in ixc-django-docker which would make this easier now?