Distributing Django projects with unique SECRET_KEYs

To add to what Carles Barrobés said, you can generate a new key using the method that Django uses in startproject:

from django.utils.crypto import get_random_string

chars = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789!@#$%^&*(-_=+)'
get_random_string(50, chars)

For Django 1.10 and above, the above code snippet is nicely wrapped up in a function.

from django.core.management.utils import get_random_secret_key
get_random_secret_key()

Link to GitHub repo

I'd go about it this way:

Have the secret key in a separate file "secret_key.py". This file does not exist for a pristine installation. In your settings.py include something like:

try:
    from .secret_key import SECRET_KEY
except ImportError:
    SETTINGS_DIR = os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__))
    generate_secret_key(os.path.join(SETTINGS_DIR, 'secret_key.py'))
    from .secret_key import SECRET_KEY

The function generate_secret_key(filename) that you will write generates a file called filename (which, as we call it, will be secret_key.py in the same dir as settings.py) with the contents:

SECRET_KEY = '....random string....'

Where random string is the generated key based on a random number.

For key generation you can use Umang's suggestion https://stackoverflow.com/a/16630719/166761.