Django settings module not found

background

I'm trying to split my settings by environment by following these instructions.

Now I would like to simply run my test command like so:

./run ./manage.py test --settings=bx.settings.local

currently the following line

os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "bx.settings")

is available in these files

manage.py
wsgi.py

and so i removed it (since it's supposed to be read from the command line instead).

I also created a settings folder inside my bx app and added the files

__init__.py
base.py
local.py

to it.

---

notes

note: the run file is this:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
DIR="$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" && pwd )"
docker run \
  --env "PATH=/beneple/venv/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin" \
  --link beneple_db:db \
  -v $DIR:/beneple \
  -t -i --rm \
  beneple/beneple \
  $@

---

problem

when i run the command

./run ./manage.py test --settings=bx.settings.local

I get this error

  File "/beneple/bx/org/serializers.py", line 10, in <module>
    from bx.settings import DOMAIN
ImportError: cannot import name DOMAIN

in serializers.py:10, we got this

from bx.settings import DOMAIN

so i replaced bx.settings with

from django.conf import settings
from settings import DOMAIN

and instead i got this error:

  File "/beneple/bx/org/serializers.py", line 12, in <module>
    from settings import DOMAIN
ImportError: No module named settings

---

debugging

the weird part is that if i put a breakpoint after from django.conf import settings, and type the following:

ipdb> print(settings)
<Settings "bx.settings.local">
ipdb> settings.DOMAIN
'http://localhost:8000'

I'm confused why it's not recognizing settings here as a module?