cannot get past a function in the debugger

hi all..

I'm getting an error in the debugger when i try to step past a certain line that i do not see when i run the same application from the console used to launch pycharm. I've explicitly specified the console's PYTHONPATH in the run/debug environment settings so there is no problem importing. The PYTHONPATH has an entry in it for the package which exports the function i'm trying to get past. In the subdirectory, the function is implemented in a .pyc file:

/data/studio/tool/releases/cent5_x86_64_py25/Kamole-Project/2.8.0/Kamole/library/python/session.pyc

This directory is referenced in the PYTHONPATH. When i try to debug, the debugger reports an error in a .py which is in another part of the filesystem.

/tmp/TOOLS_COMPILE/cent5_x86_64_py25/Kamole-Project/Kamole/library/python/session.py

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  File "/tmp/TOOLS_COMPILE/cent5_x86_64_py25/Kamole-Project/Kamole/models/property.py", line 99, in _setValue
  File "/data/app/python/modules/cent5_x86_64_py25/SQLAlchemy/0.5.0.1/sqlalchemy/orm/attributes.py", line 172, in __getattr__
    return getattr(descriptor, attribute)
AttributeError: 'property' object has no attribute 'typeMap'
AttributeError: 'property' object has no attribute 'typeMap'

The /tmp/TOOLS_COMPILE/cent5_x86_64_py25/ subdirectory contains some other tools which are referenced in the PYTHONPATH.. but not Kamole. How is PyCharm finding the session.py and why am i only seeing this error in the debugger? Is it possible that the .pyc was compiled with one version of python and the debugger is using another? I have configured PyCharm to use the same version of python as the console (2.5.2).