Class based settings for Django. Set all common settings in BaseSettings, then create a subclass for each environment. Uses the environment variable DJANGO_ENV in order to decide which subclass it should use. I named the package "zettings" rather than "settings" to avoid import problems.

settings.py

""" settings.py """
import sys, os
from zettings.base import *


sys.path.append(os.getcwd() + '/../')
ENV = os.environ.get('DJANGO_ENV', 'localdev')

# Import the right settings for this environment.
# DJANGO_ENV should be set to the name of a module which contains a
# BaseSettings subclass. It will look for zettings/<DJANGO_ENV>.py
try:
	zettings = __import__('zettings.' + ENV, fromlist=[None])
except ImportError as e:
	print(e)

this_module = sys.modules[__name__]

# We assume settings is already defined in zettings/<DJANGO_ENV>.py.
for setting in dir(zettings.settings):
	if '__' != setting[:2]:
		setattr(this_module, setting, getattr(zettings.settings, setting))


""" zettings/base.py """

#
# Base settings used for all environments.
#
class BaseSettings(object):
	def __init__(self, options):
		
		# Some settings must be set by the subclass.
		WEBSITE_ROOT    = options['WEBSITE_ROOT']
		HOST_NAME       = options['HOST_NAME']
		MEDIA_HOST_NAME = options['MEDIA_HOST_NAME']

		# The rest of the base settings goes here
		MEDIA_URL = ...

		self.set_locals(locals())

	# Put local variables in instance scope.
	# We do this so we don't have to write "self." for every Django setting.
	def set_locals(self, vars):
		for var, value in vars.iteritems():
			setattr(self, var, value)


""" zettings/hackmon.py """

from base import BaseSettings

#
# Hackmon specific settings.
#
class HackmonSettings(BaseSettings):

	def __init__(self, options):
		BaseSettings.__init__(self, options)

		DEBUG = True
		TEMPLATE_DEBUG = True

		DATABASES = {
			...
		}
		
		self.set_locals(locals())



# These are used by BaseSettings.
settings = HackmonSettings(
	{
		'WEBSITE_ROOT': '...',
		'HOST_NAME': '...',
		'MEDIA_HOST_NAME': '...',
	}
)