[py2exe] What to download when updating?

[David Bolen]

Gilles Ganault <nospam at nospam.com> writes:

> Hello
>
> 	Out of curiosity, if I recompile a Python (wxPython) app with
> py2exe, can I have customers just download the latest .exe, or are
> there dependencies that require downloading the whole thing again?

It will depend on what you changed in your application.  The most
likely file that will change is your library.zip file since it has all
of your Python modules.  I believe that with py2exe the main exe is
typically a standard stub, so it need not change, but it can if the
top level script is named differently since it has to execute it.

The other files are binary dependencies, so you may add or remove them
during any given build process depending on what modules you may newly
import (or have removed the use of).

In the end, you could in theory just compare the prior version
distribution tree to the new version is simplest.  But then you'd need
to package up an installer that did the right thing on the target
system.

To be honest, just packaging it up as a new version and putting it
into a standard installer (as with InnoSetup or NSIS) and letting the
installer keep track of what to do when installing the new version on
top of an existing version is generally simplest overall, albeit
larger.

But during internal development or other special cases, I've
definitely just distributed updated library.zip files without any
problem.

-- David