[Fixed]-Django – settings.py seems to load multiple times?

Actually what Django does is putting a wrapper around settings. It is basically an object (settings object if you want so) which give you access to some direct setters like settings.WHATEVER, so it appears like you access the global variables in settings.py direclty.

I really don’t remember though, why the import happens twice. I looked into it once when I worked on django-dynamic-settings which uses a very similar approach as Django itself.
Anyway, if you are interested in the “magic” you can follow the flow starting from the execute_from_command_line call in manage.py.

Django does some strange things with settings.py, and it will execute more than once. I’m used to seeing it imported twice, not sure why in PyCharm you’re getting four times. You have to be careful with statements with side-effects in settings.py.

A closely-related question has been asked at least twice since. I can add that a Django core developer rejected the idea that this is any sort of Django bug; it’s normal behavior.

Also see this from Graham Dumpleton.