How to detect that Python code is being executed through the debugger?

Question

Is there a simple way to detect, within Python code, that this code is being executed through the Python debugger?

I have a small Python application that uses Java code (thanks to JPype). When I'm debugging the Python part, I'd like the embedded JVM to be passed debug options too.

Answer 1

Python debuggers (as well as profilers and coverage tools) use the sys.settrace function (in the sys module) to register a callback that gets called when interesting events happen.

If you're using Python 2.6, you can call sys.gettrace() to get the current trace callback function. If it's not None then you can assume you should be passing debug parameters to the JVM.

It's not clear how you could do this pre 2.6.