Separating Django installed apps between Development vs Production

Question

I have 3 settings files:

• base.py (shared)
• development.py
• production.py

base.py has:

INSTALLED_APPS = (

    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes'
    ...

but I have some apps that I only want in my development environment, for example, debug-toolbar.

I tried this in development.py:

INSTALLED_APPS += (
    'debug_toolbar',
)

But get the error: NameError: name 'INSTALLED_APPS' is not defined

The settings files are connected like this:

__init__.py

from .base import *

try:
    from .production import *
except:
    from .development import *

How can I differentiate the installed apps between my production/development environment?

Answer 1

I simply test for DEBUG in my settings.py (assuming that in production DEBUG == FALSE) and add the apps thus:

# settings.py
if DEBUG:
    INSTALLED_APPS += (
        # Dev extensions
        'django_extensions',
        'debug_toolbar',
    )