Deploying an app with Embedded Python

[proteusguy at gmail.com]

    I've got a large C++ application that we're adding web integration
to, XMLRPC and HTTP GET/POST stuff. I'm jumping at the chance to use
embedded python to handle this aspect of the application as its so much
quicker to handle all the SSL, XML, and HTTP stuff with python and,
when the web service we integrate with changes I want to be able to
download a new python module to the app and not have to patch our C++
app to handle the changes.

    My proof of concept is working nicely but now its time to look at
packaging/releasing this product (which already has a complex install
process). My desire would be to be able to deploy with no more than 3
components, python24.dll, a zip file or something containing support
components (_socket.pyd, _ssl.lib, _ssl.pyd, etc) and the python pyc
module that contains my code to execute. Is there some way to combine
those support files into a single library or zip file to make the
installation easier and have python24.dll access them automagically? I
seem to recall python having the ability to extract stuff out of a .zip
file on the fly but maybe it was all a dream...

    Any other ideas on deploying/supporting such a setup would be
appreciated.

    -- Ben