The latest version of django-storages (1.1.3) handles file modification detection through S3 Boto.

pip install django-storages and you’re good now 🙂 Gotta love open source!

Update: set the AWS_PRELOAD_METADATA option to True in your settings file to have very fast syncs if using the S3Boto class. If using his S3, use his PreloadedS3 class.

Update 2: It’s still extremely slow to run the command.

Update 3: I forked the django-storages repository to fix the issue and added a pull request.

The problem is in the modified_time method where the fallback value is being called even if it’s not being used. I moved the fallback to an if block to be executed only if get returns None

entry = self.entries.get(name, self.bucket.get_key(self._encode_name(name)))

Should be

    entry = self.entries.get(name)
    if entry is None:
        entry = self.bucket.get_key(self._encode_name(name))

Now the difference in performance is from <.5s for 1000 requests from 100s

Update 4:

For synching 10k+ files, I believe boto has to make multiple requests since S3 paginates results causing a 5-10 second synch time. This will only get worse as we get more files.

I’m thinking a solution is to have a custom management command or django-storages update where a file is stored on S3 which has the metadata of all other files, which is updated any time a file is updated via the collectstatic command.

It won’t detect files uploaded via other means but won’t matter if the sole entry point is the management command.