diff --git a/django/conf/urls/static.py b/django/conf/urls/static.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..07a67cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/django/conf/urls/static.py
@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+import re
+from django.conf import settings
+from django.conf.urls.defaults import patterns, url
+from django.core.exceptions import ImproperlyConfigured
+
+def static(prefix, view='django.views.static.serve', **kwargs):
+    """
+    Helper function to return a URL pattern for serving files in debug mode.
+
+    urlpatterns += static(
+        prefix=settings.MEDIA_URL, document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT)
+    """
+    if not settings.DEBUG:
+        return []
+    elif not prefix:
+        raise ImproperlyConfigured("Empty static prefix not permitted")
+    elif '://' in prefix:
+        raise ImproperlyConfigured("URL '%s' not allowed as static prefix" % prefix)
+    return patterns('',
+        url(r'^%s(?P<path>.*)$' % re.escape(prefix.lstrip('/')), view, **kwargs),
+    )
diff --git a/django/contrib/staticfiles/urls.py b/django/contrib/staticfiles/urls.py
index aa4ab45..04062c1 100644
--- a/django/contrib/staticfiles/urls.py
+++ b/django/contrib/staticfiles/urls.py
@@ -1,28 +1,16 @@
-import re
 from django.conf import settings
-from django.conf.urls.defaults import patterns, url, include
-from django.core.exceptions import ImproperlyConfigured
+from django.conf.urls.static import static
 
 urlpatterns = []
 
-# only serve non-fqdn URLs
-if settings.DEBUG:
-    urlpatterns += patterns('',
-        url(r'^(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.contrib.staticfiles.views.serve'),
-    )
-
 def staticfiles_urlpatterns(prefix=None):
     """
     Helper function to return a URL pattern for serving static files.
     """
-    if not settings.DEBUG:
-        return []
     if prefix is None:
         prefix = settings.STATIC_URL
-    if not prefix or '://' in prefix:
-        raise ImproperlyConfigured(
-            "The prefix for the 'staticfiles_urlpatterns' helper is invalid.")
-    if prefix.startswith("/"):
-        prefix = prefix[1:]
-    return patterns('',
-        url(r'^%s' % re.escape(prefix), include(urlpatterns)),)
+    return static(prefix, view='django.contrib.staticfiles.views.serve')
+
+# Only append if urlpatterns are empty
+if settings.DEBUG and not urlpatterns:
+    urlpatterns += staticfiles_urlpatterns()
diff --git a/django/contrib/staticfiles/views.py b/django/contrib/staticfiles/views.py
index f5a6ec3..4d2a50d 100644
--- a/django/contrib/staticfiles/views.py
+++ b/django/contrib/staticfiles/views.py
@@ -3,24 +3,16 @@ Views and functions for serving static files. These are only to be used during
 development, and SHOULD NOT be used in a production setting.
 
 """
-import mimetypes
 import os
-import posixpath
-import re
-import stat
-import urllib
-from email.Utils import parsedate_tz, mktime_tz
 
 from django.conf import settings
 from django.core.exceptions import ImproperlyConfigured
-from django.http import Http404, HttpResponse, HttpResponseRedirect, HttpResponseNotModified
-from django.template import loader, Template, Context, TemplateDoesNotExist
-from django.utils.http import http_date
+from django.http import Http404
+from django.views.static import serve as static_serve
 
-from django.contrib.staticfiles import finders, utils
+from django.contrib.staticfiles import finders
 
-
-def serve(request, path, document_root=None, show_indexes=False, insecure=False):
+def serve(request, path, document_root=None, insecure=False, **kwargs):
     """
     Serve static files below a given point in the directory structure or
     from locations inferred from the static files finders.
@@ -42,124 +34,13 @@ def serve(request, path, document_root=None, show_indexes=False, insecure=False)
     a template called ``static/directory_index.html``.
     """
     if not settings.DEBUG and not insecure:
-        raise ImproperlyConfigured("The view to serve static files can only "
-                                   "be used if the DEBUG setting is True or "
-                                   "the --insecure option of 'runserver' is "
-                                   "used")
+        raise ImproperlyConfigured("The staticfiles view can only be used in "
+                                   "debug mode or if the the --insecure "
+                                   "option of 'runserver' is used")
     if not document_root:
         path = os.path.normpath(path)
         absolute_path = finders.find(path)
         if not absolute_path:
             raise Http404('"%s" could not be found' % path)
         document_root, path = os.path.split(absolute_path)
-    # Clean up given path to only allow serving files below document_root.
-    path = posixpath.normpath(urllib.unquote(path))
-    path = path.lstrip('/')
-    newpath = ''
-    for part in path.split('/'):
-        if not part:
-            # Strip empty path components.
-            continue
-        drive, part = os.path.splitdrive(part)
-        head, part = os.path.split(part)
-        if part in (os.curdir, os.pardir):
-            # Strip '.' and '..' in path.
-            continue
-        newpath = os.path.join(newpath, part).replace('\\', '/')
-    if newpath and path != newpath:
-        return HttpResponseRedirect(newpath)
-    fullpath = os.path.join(document_root, newpath)
-    if os.path.isdir(fullpath):
-        if show_indexes:
-            return directory_index(newpath, fullpath)
-        raise Http404("Directory indexes are not allowed here.")
-    if not os.path.exists(fullpath):
-        raise Http404('"%s" does not exist' % fullpath)
-    # Respect the If-Modified-Since header.
-    statobj = os.stat(fullpath)
-    mimetype, encoding = mimetypes.guess_type(fullpath)
-    mimetype = mimetype or 'application/octet-stream'
-    if not was_modified_since(request.META.get('HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE'),
-                              statobj[stat.ST_MTIME], statobj[stat.ST_SIZE]):
-        return HttpResponseNotModified(mimetype=mimetype)
-    contents = open(fullpath, 'rb').read()
-    response = HttpResponse(contents, mimetype=mimetype)
-    response["Last-Modified"] = http_date(statobj[stat.ST_MTIME])
-    response["Content-Length"] = len(contents)
-    if encoding:
-        response["Content-Encoding"] = encoding
-    return response
-
-
-DEFAULT_DIRECTORY_INDEX_TEMPLATE = """
-<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
-<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
-  <head>
-    <meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
-    <meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us" />
-    <meta name="robots" content="NONE,NOARCHIVE" />
-    <title>Index of {{ directory }}</title>
-  </head>
-  <body>
-    <h1>Index of {{ directory }}</h1>
-    <ul>
-      {% ifnotequal directory "/" %}
-      <li><a href="../">../</a></li>
-      {% endifnotequal %}
-      {% for f in file_list %}
-      <li><a href="{{ f|urlencode }}">{{ f }}</a></li>
-      {% endfor %}
-    </ul>
-  </body>
-</html>
-"""
-
-def directory_index(path, fullpath):
-    try:
-        t = loader.select_template(['static/directory_index.html',
-                'static/directory_index'])
-    except TemplateDoesNotExist:
-        t = Template(DEFAULT_DIRECTORY_INDEX_TEMPLATE, name='Default directory index template')
-    files = []
-    for f in os.listdir(fullpath):
-        if not f.startswith('.'):
-            if os.path.isdir(os.path.join(fullpath, f)):
-                f += '/'
-            files.append(f)
-    c = Context({
-        'directory' : path + '/',
-        'file_list' : files,
-    })
-    return HttpResponse(t.render(c))
-
-def was_modified_since(header=None, mtime=0, size=0):
-    """
-    Was something modified since the user last downloaded it?
-
-    header
-      This is the value of the If-Modified-Since header.  If this is None,
-      I'll just return True.
-
-    mtime
-      This is the modification time of the item we're talking about.
-
-    size
-      This is the size of the item we're talking about.
-    """
-    try:
-        if header is None:
-            raise ValueError
-        matches = re.match(r"^([^;]+)(; length=([0-9]+))?$", header,
-                           re.IGNORECASE)
-        header_date = parsedate_tz(matches.group(1))
-        if header_date is None:
-            raise ValueError
-        header_mtime = mktime_tz(header_date)
-        header_len = matches.group(3)
-        if header_len and int(header_len) != size:
-            raise ValueError
-        if mtime > header_mtime:
-            raise ValueError
-    except (AttributeError, ValueError, OverflowError):
-        return True
-    return False
+    return static_serve(request, path, document_root=document_root, **kwargs)
diff --git a/django/core/servers/basehttp.py b/django/core/servers/basehttp.py
index 7772a0b..34c76f4 100644
--- a/django/core/servers/basehttp.py
+++ b/django/core/servers/basehttp.py
@@ -18,8 +18,9 @@ import warnings
 from django.core.management.color import color_style
 from django.utils.http import http_date
 from django.utils._os import safe_join
+from django.views.static import serve
 
-from django.contrib.staticfiles import handlers, views as static
+from django.contrib.staticfiles import handlers
 
 __version__ = "0.1"
 __all__ = ['WSGIServer','WSGIRequestHandler']
@@ -677,8 +678,7 @@ class AdminMediaHandler(handlers.StaticFilesHandler):
 
     def serve(self, request):
         document_root, path = os.path.split(self.file_path(request.path))
-        return static.serve(request, path,
-            document_root=document_root, insecure=True)
+        return serve(request, path, document_root=document_root)
 
     def _should_handle(self, path):
         """
diff --git a/django/views/static.py b/django/views/static.py
index 2ce886f..9b34312 100644
--- a/django/views/static.py
+++ b/django/views/static.py
@@ -9,7 +9,6 @@ import posixpath
 import re
 import stat
 import urllib
-import warnings
 from email.Utils import parsedate_tz, mktime_tz
 
 from django.template import loader
@@ -17,11 +16,8 @@ from django.http import Http404, HttpResponse, HttpResponseRedirect, HttpRespons
 from django.template import Template, Context, TemplateDoesNotExist
 from django.utils.http import http_date
 
-from django.contrib.staticfiles.views import (directory_index,
-    was_modified_since, serve as staticfiles_serve)
 
-
-def serve(request, path, document_root=None, show_indexes=False, insecure=False):
+def serve(request, path, document_root=None, show_indexes=False):
     """
     Serve static files below a given point in the directory structure.
 
@@ -35,7 +31,114 @@ def serve(request, path, document_root=None, show_indexes=False, insecure=False)
     but if you'd like to override it, you can create a template called
     ``static/directory_index.html``.
     """
-    warnings.warn("The view at `django.views.static.serve` is deprecated; "
-                  "use the path `django.contrib.staticfiles.views.serve` "
-                  "instead.", PendingDeprecationWarning)
-    return staticfiles_serve(request, path, document_root, show_indexes, insecure)
+    # Clean up given path to only allow serving files below document_root.
+    path = posixpath.normpath(urllib.unquote(path))
+    path = path.lstrip('/')
+    newpath = ''
+    for part in path.split('/'):
+        if not part:
+            # Strip empty path components.
+            continue
+        drive, part = os.path.splitdrive(part)
+        head, part = os.path.split(part)
+        if part in (os.curdir, os.pardir):
+            # Strip '.' and '..' in path.
+            continue
+        newpath = os.path.join(newpath, part).replace('\\', '/')
+    if newpath and path != newpath:
+        return HttpResponseRedirect(newpath)
+    fullpath = os.path.join(document_root, newpath)
+    if os.path.isdir(fullpath):
+        if show_indexes:
+            return directory_index(newpath, fullpath)
+        raise Http404("Directory indexes are not allowed here.")
+    if not os.path.exists(fullpath):
+        raise Http404('"%s" does not exist' % fullpath)
+    # Respect the If-Modified-Since header.
+    statobj = os.stat(fullpath)
+    mimetype, encoding = mimetypes.guess_type(fullpath)
+    mimetype = mimetype or 'application/octet-stream'
+    if not was_modified_since(request.META.get('HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE'),
+                              statobj[stat.ST_MTIME], statobj[stat.ST_SIZE]):
+        return HttpResponseNotModified(mimetype=mimetype)
+    contents = open(fullpath, 'rb').read()
+    response = HttpResponse(contents, mimetype=mimetype)
+    response["Last-Modified"] = http_date(statobj[stat.ST_MTIME])
+    response["Content-Length"] = len(contents)
+    if encoding:
+        response["Content-Encoding"] = encoding
+    return response
+
+
+DEFAULT_DIRECTORY_INDEX_TEMPLATE = """
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us" />
+    <meta name="robots" content="NONE,NOARCHIVE" />
+    <title>Index of {{ directory }}</title>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+    <h1>Index of {{ directory }}</h1>
+    <ul>
+      {% ifnotequal directory "/" %}
+      <li><a href="../">../</a></li>
+      {% endifnotequal %}
+      {% for f in file_list %}
+      <li><a href="{{ f|urlencode }}">{{ f }}</a></li>
+      {% endfor %}
+    </ul>
+  </body>
+</html>
+"""
+
+def directory_index(path, fullpath):
+    try:
+        t = loader.select_template(['static/directory_index.html',
+                'static/directory_index'])
+    except TemplateDoesNotExist:
+        t = Template(DEFAULT_DIRECTORY_INDEX_TEMPLATE, name='Default directory index template')
+    files = []
+    for f in os.listdir(fullpath):
+        if not f.startswith('.'):
+            if os.path.isdir(os.path.join(fullpath, f)):
+                f += '/'
+            files.append(f)
+    c = Context({
+        'directory' : path + '/',
+        'file_list' : files,
+    })
+    return HttpResponse(t.render(c))
+
+def was_modified_since(header=None, mtime=0, size=0):
+    """
+    Was something modified since the user last downloaded it?
+
+    header
+      This is the value of the If-Modified-Since header.  If this is None,
+      I'll just return True.
+
+    mtime
+      This is the modification time of the item we're talking about.
+
+    size
+      This is the size of the item we're talking about.
+    """
+    try:
+        if header is None:
+            raise ValueError
+        matches = re.match(r"^([^;]+)(; length=([0-9]+))?$", header,
+                           re.IGNORECASE)
+        header_date = parsedate_tz(matches.group(1))
+        if header_date is None:
+            raise ValueError
+        header_mtime = mktime_tz(header_date)
+        header_len = matches.group(3)
+        if header_len and int(header_len) != size:
+            raise ValueError
+        if mtime > header_mtime:
+            raise ValueError
+    except (AttributeError, ValueError, OverflowError):
+        return True
+    return False
diff --git a/docs/howto/static-files.txt b/docs/howto/static-files.txt
index 94e04bb..b68004d 100644
--- a/docs/howto/static-files.txt
+++ b/docs/howto/static-files.txt
@@ -109,10 +109,9 @@ the framework see :doc:`the staticfiles reference </ref/contrib/staticfiles>`.
    :setting:`MEDIA_URL` different from your :setting:`STATIC_ROOT` and
    :setting:`STATIC_URL`. You will need to arrange for serving of files in
    :setting:`MEDIA_ROOT` yourself; ``staticfiles`` does not deal with
-   user-uploaded files at all. You can, however, use ``staticfiles``'
-   :func:`~django.contrib.staticfiles.views.serve` view for serving
-   :setting:`MEDIA_ROOT` in development; see
-   :ref:`staticfiles-serve-other-directories`.
+   user-uploaded files at all. You can, however, use
+   :func:`~django.views.static.serve` view for serving :setting:`MEDIA_ROOT`
+   in development; see :ref:`staticfiles-serve-other-directories`.
 
 .. _staticfiles-in-templates:
 
diff --git a/docs/ref/contrib/staticfiles.txt b/docs/ref/contrib/staticfiles.txt
index dd26fe5..9a9ee0b 100644
--- a/docs/ref/contrib/staticfiles.txt
+++ b/docs/ref/contrib/staticfiles.txt
@@ -343,5 +343,13 @@ by appending something like this to your URLconf::
                {'document_root': settings.MEDIA_ROOT}),
        )
 
+Luckily Django also ships with a small URL helper function that shrinks
+that down a bit::
+
+    from django.conf import settings
+    from django.conf.urls.static import static
+
+    urlpatterns += static(settings.MEDIA_URL, document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT)
+
 This snippet assumes you've also set your :setting:`MEDIA_URL` (in development)
 to ``/media/``.
diff --git a/tests/regressiontests/staticfiles_tests/tests.py b/tests/regressiontests/staticfiles_tests/tests.py
index d524254..0ceb11b 100644
--- a/tests/regressiontests/staticfiles_tests/tests.py
+++ b/tests/regressiontests/staticfiles_tests/tests.py
@@ -293,9 +293,8 @@ class TestServeDisabled(TestServeStatic):
         settings.DEBUG = False
 
     def test_disabled_serving(self):
-        self.assertRaisesRegexp(ImproperlyConfigured, 'The view to serve '
-            'static files can only be used if the DEBUG setting is True',
-            self._response, 'test.txt')
+        self.assertRaisesRegexp(ImproperlyConfigured, 'The staticfiles view '
+            'can only be used in debug mode ', self._response, 'test.txt')
 
 
 class TestServeStaticWithDefaultURL(TestServeStatic, TestDefaults):
