This is one of those things that is tough to discuss wihtout really seeing code. We might be talking about two different things right now. I can certainly under

This is one of those things that is tough to discuss wihtout really seeing code. We might be talking about two different things right now. I can certainly understand the issue you are discussing, but I feel like I have been able to avoid it with this approach. Another thing that I did not put in the post but that I tend to add-in to this concept is a 'dump my env' function. I will occassionally bundle this up and write it out when certain relevant issues or crashes happen. def get_snapshot(): """ Provides a snapshot of the current system configuration. """ return filter_dict(vars(module), exclude_predicate) Very handy. From my ipython shell I can just hit config.get_snapshot() and understand the state of the world.