file structure mangement

[techtoast]

I am currently maintaining course material for a client placed in basic windows folders and organized logically in a tree structure (class, part 1/2, ppt's/doc's etc.) and have run into some problems. I deployed the program using NSIS (Nullsoft Scripted Install System), and everything seemed to work fine. But i've been getting reports the some files are missing or running differently on each peers' computer, or are corrupted. Another problem that i am having, is that there is so much content (about 2GB) that it takes a very long time to compile, and to install.

On to the solution. I'm thinking I could build a python script for both the development side, and the client side. On the development side, the script would compare the bugged version to the fixed version, then construct and compile a patch (the client side script), that would delete, move, and replace the necessary files respectively. How might I go about doing this? Should i be using a different language? Am I going about this the right way?

All your help is greatly appreciated.

[WingedPanther]

I would start with figuring out two things:
1) what files are getting misplaced
2) why are they getting misplaced

Fixing your NSIS script would be my first issue. Then you could add an option to "repair" that would run via NSIS as well.

[techtoast]

I checked and rechcked my NSIS script and that dosen't seam to be the problem. Somewhere in translation a handfull of files got corrupted, damaged, or lost. I still think that a patch builder would work better for frequent updates and changes.

I like the idea of being able to fix, update, or change a live file system rather than digging through directory listings, then make the patch, knowing that everything is where it should be.

[spihulcre]

Thanks for your sharing. Thanks for sharing this useful information. It's great.