Restarting a self-updating python script
The CherryPy project has code that restarts itself. Here's how they do it:
args = sys.argv[:]
self.log('Re-spawning %s' % ' '.join(args))
args.insert(0, sys.executable)
if sys.platform == 'win32':
args = ['"%s"' % arg for arg in args]
os.chdir(_startup_cwd)
os.execv(sys.executable, args)
I've used this technique in my own code, and it works great. (I didn't bother to do the argument-quoting step on windows above, but it's probably necessary if arguments could contain spaces or other special characters.)
I think the best solution whould be something like this:
Your normal program:
...
# ... part that downloaded newest files and put it into the "newest" folder
from subprocess import Popen
Popen("/home/code/reloader.py", shell=True) # start reloader
exit("exit for updating all files")
The update script: (e.g.: home/code/reloader.py)
from shutil import copy2, rmtree
from sys import exit
# maybie you could do this automatic:
copy2("/home/code/newest/file1.py", "/home/code/") # copy file
copy2("/home/code/newest/file2.py", "/home/code/")
copy2("/home/code/newest/file3.py", "/home/code/")
...
rmtree('/home/code/newest') # will delete the folder itself
Popen("/home/code/program.py", shell=True) # go back to your program
exit("exit to restart the true program")
I hope this will help you.
In Linux, or any other form of unix, os.execl and friends are a good choice for this -- you just need to re-exec sys.executable with the same parameters it was executed with last time (sys.argv
, more or less) or any variant thereof if you need to inform your next incarnation that it's actually a restart. On Windows, os.spawnl (and friends) is about the best you can do (though it will transiently take more time and memory than os.execl and friends would during the transition).