How to manage local vs production settings in Django?

Two Scoops of Django: Best Practices for Django 1.5 suggests using version control for your settings files and storing the files in a separate directory:

project/
    app1/
    app2/
    project/
        __init__.py
        settings/
            __init__.py
            base.py
            local.py
            production.py
    manage.py

The base.py file contains common settings (such as MEDIA_ROOT or ADMIN), while local.py and production.py have site-specific settings:

In the base file settings/base.py:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    # common apps...
)

In the local development settings file settings/local.py:

from project.settings.base import *

DEBUG = True
INSTALLED_APPS += (
    'debug_toolbar', # and other apps for local development
)

In the file production settings file settings/production.py:

from project.settings.base import *

DEBUG = False
INSTALLED_APPS += (
    # other apps for production site
)

Then when you run django, you add the --settings option:

# Running django for local development
$ ./manage.py runserver 0:8000 --settings=project.settings.local

# Running django shell on the production site
$ ./manage.py shell --settings=project.settings.production

The authors of the book have also put up a sample project layout template on Github.

In settings.py:

try:
    from local_settings import *
except ImportError as e:
    pass

You can override what needed in local_settings.py; it should stay out of your version control then. But since you mention copying I'm guessing you use none ;)