py2exe 0.5.0 (finally) released

[Thomas Heller]

**py2exe 0.5.0** (finally) released
===================================

py2exe is a Python distutils extension which converts python scripts
into executable windows programs, able to run without requiring a
python installation.

News

    Python 2.3 is required, because the new zipimport feature is used.
    The zipimport mechanism is able to handle the early imports of the
    warnings and also the encodings module which is done by Python.

    Creates a single directory, which must be deployed completely.

    py2exe can create any number of console and gui executables in
    this directory, plus optionally windows service exes, plus
    optionally exe and dll com servers.  The com servers can expose
    one or more com object classes.

    All pure Python files are contained in a single zip archive, which
    is shared by all the executables.  The zip archive may also be
    used by programs embedding Python.  Since extension modules cannot
    be imported from zipfiles, simple pure Python loaders are included
    in the zipfile which load the extensions from the file system
    (without requiring that the directory is in sys.path).

    It is now simple to build py2exe from the sources, provided you
    have MSVC6 installed - there are no dependencies on win32all
    sources.

    The created executables are standard PE executable files now, no
    longer is something appended to the exe portion.

Download from the usual location:

<http://starship.python.net/crew/theller/py2exe>

Many thanks to Mark Hammond who worked hard to improve the COM
support, and suggested and implemented a lot of the new features.

Enjoy,

Thomas