How do I dump an entire Python process for later debugging inspection?

There is no builtin way other than aborting (with os.abort(), causing the coredump if resource limits allow it) -- although you can certainly build your own 'dump' function that dumps relevant information about the data you care about. There are no ready-made tools for it.

As for handling the corefile of a Python process, the Python source has a gdbinit file that contains useful macros. It's still a lot more painful than somehow getting into the process itself (with pdb or the interactive interpreter) but it makes life a little easier.

It's also possible to write something that would dump all the data from the process, e.g.

• Pickler that ignores the objects it can't pickle (replacing them with something else) (e.g. Python: Pickling a dict with some unpicklable items)
• Method that recursively converts everything into serializable stuff (e.g. this, except it needs a check for infinitely recursing objects and do something with those; also it could try dir() and getattr() to process some of the unknown objects, e.g. extension classes).

But leaving a running process with manhole or pylons or something like that certainly seems more convenient when possible.

(also, I wonder if something more convenient was written since this question was first asked)