[[!tag programming python]]

I've just made my first upload to PyPI, the Python Package Index, which is the closest thing to CPAN that Python has.

I chose tracing as my first package, since it is small and simple and has no dependencies outside the standard library.

tracing provides a couple of functions for logging debug messages, and allows the user to enable or disable logging for particular code modules.

It is sometimes practical to add a lot of debugging log messages to a program, but having them enabled all the time results in very large log files. Also, logging that much takes quite a bit of time.

This module provides a way to turn such debugging or tracing messages on and off, based on the filename they occur in. The logging can that be left in the code, and only enabled when it is needed, for example with a command line option.

The actual logging happens via logging.debug.