How to inspect a variable (sys.modules) for changes in the execution of a program?

[Emile van Sebille]

On 2/15/2011 10:19 AM Chris Rebert said...
> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 7:17 AM, Jorge Vargas<jorge.vargas at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I have the following situation. In a big project that involves many
>> dependencies (and sadly some sys.module hacks) we have a bug, and it
>> will really help if i could monitor all changes made to that variable.
>> Is there a way to trace those changes ?
>
> Is the variable's value of a mutable or immutable type? What is the
> variable's scope (e.g. module-level global, or object attribute)? Is
> the variable subject to getting rebound to an entirely new
> value/object?
>
> The answers to these questions will determine how much work will be
> required to trace "changes" to the variable. I know of no built-in way
> to directly do such a thing, but the underlying functionality
> necessary to implement such a feature (e.g. sys.settrace,
> __getattribute__, __setattr__) does exist.

Out of curiosity, if it's immutable, what approach might you try to 
capture/trace reassignment?  I've got a toy tracer that breaks with 
simple assignment:

 >>> A=tracer(3)
 >>> A
3
 >>> A+=3
value changed by 3 by add
 >>> A
6
 >>> B=A+6
value changed by 6 by add
 >>> B
12
 >>> B+=3
value changed by 3 by add
 >>> B
15
 >>> A = 4
 >>> A+=4
 >>>

Emile