[shabda]

however typical developments do, and this question is about typical development setup

[neelesh]

Agree. What we probably need is a nice way to switch between deployment/development setups, possibly by splitting settings.py like rails

[suvike]

the usual trick is to use a local_settings.py.

put all of your environment-specific variables in there, and put 'from local_settings.py import *' at the end of your settings.py