How to execute another python script from your script and be able to debug?

Question

You have wrapper python script that is calling another python script, currently using os.system('python another.py some-params').

You want to be able to debug both scripts and if you use os.system() you'll loose the debugger, so it does make sense to load the second script using the same interpretor instead of starting another one.

import doesn't to the expected thing because it does not run the __main__.

Other variants, like exec() or runpy seams to miss the argv parameters.

What solution do you see for this issue?

I'm looking for a solution that does not require you to modify the another.py script. Probably this will require to modify the sys.argv before executing it.

Answer 1

So far I found a solution that works only with Python 2.7+ (runpy.run_path() was introduced in Python 2.7).

If you can find one that works with 2.6 (or even 2.5) you are welcome to post it.

import runpy, sys
saved_argv = sys.argv
... # patch sys.argv[1:] and load new command line parameters
# run_path() does change only sys.argv[0] but restores it
runpy.run_path('another.py', run_name="__main__")
sys.argv = saved_argv # restore sys.argv