Project Structure

Overall Structure

The files in the directory tree below are labeled as follows:

Symbol	Meaning
RE	Required for each new version
RF	Required the first time
R	Reserved file names

Root directory of project
├── <general code files>
├── .pyautodownloads/ **R**
├── <an entry point file that creates the launcher object>
├── filelist.txt **RF**
├── project.zip (can be changed) **R**
├── version.txt **RE**
└── version_check.log **R**

The code starts from an entry point file that initializes the Launcher object.

Note

The entry point file currently cannot be replaced by the update process. While this functionality may be added in a future version, please try to avoid making changes that would require updating the entry point file.

Special Files

filelist.txt

This file contains the list of file paths to be removed after the update process. For example, for a directory structure such as

directory-of-program
├── res
│   └── logo.png
├── src
│   ├── module.py
│   └── ui.py
├── test
│   └── unit_test.py
├── filelist.txt
├── init.py
└── README.txt

The contents of filelist.txt would be

res/logo.png
src/module.py
src/ui.py
test/unit_test.py
init.py
README.txt

The developer must include this file with the initial installer. The update process will automatically generate a new filelist.txt during the update process.

project.zip (or equivalent)

This is the downloaded archive containing the new files.

.pyautodownloads/

This temporary directory contains the downloaded new files. The directory will be emptied after the update.

version.txt

This file contains a PEP 440 version number for the code. The local copy is compared with the server version to check if an update is necessary.

version_check.log

This file records when the server was contacted to check for updates. Each line has one of the following formats:

|Old <old version number>|New <new version number>|Time <timestamp>
|Old <old version number>|Up to date|Time <timestamp>
|Old <old version number>|Server Invalid|Time <timestamp>