How would you organize Django settings across environments?

Organizes Django configuration without duplicating environments or leaking secrets into source code.

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I keep shared defaults in code and load environment-specific values such as secret keys, database URLs, allowed hosts, and service credentials from deployment configuration. The application should fail clearly at startup when a required value is missing or malformed. Development convenience settings must not silently become production defaults, and secrets should never be committed to the repository.

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Practical configuration ownership, validation, secret handling, and deployment consistency.

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Settings should make differences explicit while keeping one understandable configuration model.
I keep shared defaults in code and load environment-specific values such as secret keys, database URLs, allowed hosts, and service credentials from deployment configuration. The application should fail clearly at startup when a required value is missing or malformed. Development convenience settings must not silently become production defaults, and secrets should never be committed to the repository.
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A small settings package can separate base, development, test, and production concerns, but I avoid copying the whole file for each environment. Each variant imports or composes common values and changes only what is intentional. I also centralize parsing for booleans, lists, URLs, and durations because raw environment strings create subtle mistakes. CI should start the application with production-like settings and Django's deployment checks.

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Keeping production secrets in a committed settings module.
Duplicating the entire settings file per environment.
Treating every missing value as an acceptable development default.

How would you organize Django settings across environments?

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