Changes from 4.0 to 4.0.1
 1) Added support for Python 2.6. On Windows a manifest file is now required
    because of the switch to using the new Microsoft C runtime.
 2) Ensure that hooks are run for builtin modules.

Changes from 4.0b1 to 4.0
 1) Added support for copying files to the target directory.
 2) Added support for a hook that runs when a module is missing.
 3) Added support for binary path includes as well as excludes; use sequences
    rather than dictionaries as a more convenient API; exclude the standard
    locations for 32-bit and 64-bit libaries in multi-architecture systems.
 4) Added support for searching zip files (egg files) for modules.
 5) Added support for handling system exit exceptions similarly to what Python
    does itself as requested by Sylvain.
 6) Added code to wait for threads to shut down like the normal Python
    interpreter does. Thanks to Mariano Disanzo for discovering this
    discrepancy.
 7) Hooks added or modified based on feedback from many people.
 8) Don't include the version name in the display name of the MSI.
 9) Use the OS dependent path normalization routines rather than simply use the
    lowercase value as on Unix case is important; thanks to Artie Eoff for
    pointing this out.
10) Include a version attribute in the cx_Freeze package and display it in the
    output for the --version option to the script.
11) Include build instructions as requested by Norbert Sebok.
12) Add support for copying files when modules are included which require data
    files to operate properly; add support for copying the necessary files for
    the Tkinter and matplotlib modules.
13) Handle deferred imports recursively as needed; ensure that from lists do
    not automatically indicate that they are part of the module or the deferred
    import processing doesn't actually work!
14) Handle the situation where a module imports everything from a package and
    the __all__ variable has been defined but the package has not actually
    imported everything in the __all__ variable during initialization.
15) Modified license text to more closely match the Python Software Foundation
    license as was intended.
16) Added sample script for freezing an application using matplotlib.
17) Renamed freeze to cxfreeze to avoid conflict with another package that uses
    that executable as requested by Siegfried Gevatter.

Changes from 3.0.3 to 4.0b1
 1) Added support for placing modules in library.zip or in a separate zip file
    for each executable that is produced.
 2) Added support for copying binary dependent files (DLLs and shared
    libraries)
 3) Added support for including all submodules in a package
 4) Added support for including icons in Windows executables
 5) Added support for constants module which can be used for determining
    certain build constants at runtime
 6) Added support for relative imports available in Python 2.5 and up
 7) Added support for building Windows installers (Python 2.5 and up) and
    RPM packages
 8) Added support for distutils configuration scripts
 9) Added support for hooks which can force inclusion or exclusion of modules
    when certain modules are included
10) Added documentation and samples
11) Added setup.py for building the cx_Freeze package instead of a script
    used to build only the frozen bases
12) FreezePython renamed to a script called freeze in the Python distribution
13) On Linux and other platforms that support it set LD_RUN_PATH to include
    the directory in which the executable is located

Changes from 3.0.2 to 3.0.3
 1) In Common.c, used MAXPATHLEN defined in the Python OS independent include
    file rather than the PATH_MAX define which is OS dependent and is not
    available on IRIX as noted by Andrew Jones.
 2) In the initscript ConsoleSetLibPath.py, added lines from initscript
    Console.py that should have been there since the only difference between
    that script and this one is the automatic re-execution of the executable.
 3) Added an explicit "import encodings" to the initscripts in order to handle
    Unicode encodings a little better. Thanks to Ralf Schmitt for pointing out
    the problem and its solution.
 4) Generated a meaningful name for the extension loader script so that it is
    clear which particular extension module is being loaded when an exception
    is being raised.
 5) In MakeFrozenBases.py, use distutils to figure out a few more
    platform-dependent linker flags as suggested by Ralf Schmitt.

Changes from 3.0.1 to 3.0.2
 1) Add support for compressing the byte code in the zip files that are
    produced.
 2) Add better support for the win32com package as requested by Barry Scott.
 3) Prevent deletion of target file if it happens to be identical to the
    source file.
 4) Include additional flags for local modifications to a Python build as
    suggested by Benjamin Rutt.
 5) Expanded instructions for building cx_Freeze from source based on a
    suggestion from Gregg Lind.
 6) Fix typo in help string.

Changes from 3.0 to 3.0.1
 1) Added option --default-path which is used to specify the path used when
    finding modules. This is particularly useful when performing cross
    compilations (such as for building a frozen executable for Windows CE).
 2) Added option --shared-lib-name which can be used to specify the name of
    the shared library (DLL) implementing the Python runtime that is required
    for the frozen executable to work. This option is also particularly useful
    when cross compiling since the normal method for determining this
    information cannot be used.
 3) Added option --zip-include which allows for additional files to be added
    to the zip file that contains the modules that implement the Python
    script. Thanks to Barray Warsaw for providing the initial patch.
 4) Added support for handling read-only files properly. Thanks to Peter
    Grayson for pointing out the problem and providing a solution.
 5) Added support for a frozen executable to be a symbolic link. Thanks to
    Robert Kiendl for providing the initial patch.
 6) Enhanced the support for running a frozen executable that uses an existing
    Python installation to locate modules it requires. This is primarily of
    use for embedding Python where the interface is C but the ability to run
    from source is still desired.
 7) Modified the documentation to indicate that building from source on
    Windows currently requires the mingw compiler (http://www.mingw.org).
 8) Workaround the problem in Python 2.3 (fixed in Python 2.4) which causes a
    broken module to be left in sys.modules if an ImportError takes place
    during the execution of the code in that module. Thanks to Roger Binns
    for pointing this out.

Changes from 3.0 beta3 to 3.0
 1) Ensure that ldd is only run on extension modules.
 2) Allow for using a compiler other than gcc for building the frozen base
    executables by setting the environment variable CC.
 3) Ensure that the import lock is not held while executing the main script;
    otherwise, attempts to import a module within a thread will hang that
    thread as noted by Roger Binns.
 4) Added support for replacing the paths in all frozen modules with something
    else (so that for example the path of the machine on which the freezing
    was done is not displayed in tracebacks)

Changes from 3.0 beta2 to 3.0 beta3
 1) Explicitly include the warnings module so that at runtime warnings are
    suppressed as when running Python normally.
 2) Improve the extension loader so that an ImportError is raised when the
    dynamic module is not located; otherwise an error about missing attributes
    is raised instead.
 3) Extension loaders are only created when copying dependencies since the
    normal module should be loadable in the situation where a Python
    installation is available.
 4) Added support for Python 2.4.
 5) Fixed the dependency checking for wxPython to be a little more
    intelligent.

Changes from 3.0 beta1 to 3.0 beta2
 1) Fix issues with locating the initscripts and bases relative to the
    directory in which the executable was started.
 2) Added new base executable ConsoleKeepPath which is used when an existing
    Python installation is required (such as for FreezePython itself).
 3) Forced the existence of a Python installation to be ignored when using the
    standard Console base executable.
 4) Remove the existing file when copying dependent files; otherwise, an error
    is raised when attempting to overwrite read-only files.
 5) Added option -O (or -OO) to FreezePython to set the optimization used when
    generating bytecode.

Changes from 2.2 to 3.0 beta1
 1) cx_Freeze now requires Python 2.3 or higher since it takes advantage of
    the ability of Python 2.3 and higher to import modules from zip files.
    This makes the freezing process considerably simpler and also allows for
    the execution of multiple frozen packages (such as found in COM servers or
    shared libraries) without requiring modification to the Python modules.
 2) All external dependencies have been removed. cx_Freeze now only requires
    a standard Python distribution to do its work.
 3) Added the ability to define the initialization scripts that cx_Freeze uses
    on startup of the frozen program. Previously, these scripts were written
    in C and could not easily be changed; now they are written in Python and
    can be found in the initscripts directory (and chosen with the
    new --init-script option to FreezePython).
 4) The base executable ConsoleSetLibPath has been removed and replaced with
    the initscript ConsoleSetLibPath.
 5) Removed base executables for Win32 services and Win32 COM servers. This
    functionality will be restored in the future but it is not currently in a
    state that is ready for release. If this functionality is required, please
    use py2exe or contact me for my work in progress.
 6) The attribute sys.frozen is now set so that more recent pywin32 modules
    work as expected when frozen.
 7) Added option --include-path to FreezePython to allow overriding of
    sys.path without modifying the environment variable PYTHONPATH.
 8) Added option --target-dir/--install-dir to specify the directory in which
    the frozen executable and its dependencies will be placed.
 9) Removed the option --shared-lib since it was used for building shared
    libraries and can be managed with the initscript SharedLib.py.
10) MakeFrozenBases.py now checks the platform specific include directory as
    requested by Michael Partridge.


Changes from 2.1 to 2.2
 1) Add option (--ext-list-file) to FreezePython to write the list of
    extensions copied to the installation directory to a file. This option is
    useful in cases where multiple builds are performed into the same
    installation directory.
 2) Pass the arguments on the command line through to Win32 GUI applications.
    Thanks to Michael Porter for pointing this out.
 3) Link directly against the python DLL when building the frozen bases on
    Windows, thus eliminating the need for building an import library.
 4) Force sys.path to include the directory in which the script to be frozen
    is found.
 5) Make sure that the installation directory exists before attempting to
    copy the target binary into it.
 6) The Win32GUI base has been modified to display fatal errors in message
    boxes, rather than printing errors to stderr, since on Windows the
    standard file IO handles are all closed.

Changes from 2.0 to 2.1
 1) Remove dependency on Python 2.2. Thanks to Paul Moore for not only
    pointing it out but providing patches.
 2) Set up the list of frozen modules in advance, rather than doing it after
    Python is initialized so that implicit imports done by Python can be
    satisfied. The bug in Python 2.3 that demonstrated this issue has been
    fixed in the first release candidate. Thanks to Thomas Heller for pointing
    out the obvious in this instance!
 3) Added additional base executable (ConsoleSetLibPath) to support setting
    the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable on Unix platforms and restarting the
    executable to put the new setting into effect. This is primarily of use
    in distributing wxPython applications on Unix where the shared library
    has an embedded RPATH value which can cause problems.
 4) Small improvements of documentation based on feedback from several people.
 5) Print information about the files written or copied during the freezing
    process.
 6) Do not copy extensions when freezing if the path is being overridden since
    it is expected that a full Python installation is available to the target
    users of the frozen binary.
 7) Provide meaningful error message when the wxPython library cannot be
    found during the freezing process.

Changes from 1.1 to 2.0
 1) Added support for in process (DLL) COM servers using PythonCOM.
 2) Ensured that the frozen flag is set prior to determining the full path for
    the program in order to avoid warnings about Python not being found on
    some platforms.
 3) Added include file and resource file to the source tree to avoid the
    dependency on the Wine message compiler for Win32 builds.
 4) Dropped the option --copy-extensions; this now happens automatically since
    the resulting binary is useless without them.
 5) Added a sample for building a Win32 service.
 6) Make use of improved modules from Python 2.3 (which function under 2.2)

Changes from 1.0 to 1.1
 1) Fixed import error with C extensions in packages; thanks to Thomas Heller
    for pointing out the solution to this problem.
 2) Added options to FreezePython to allow for the inclusion of modules which
    will not be found by the module finder (--include-modules) and the
    exclusion of modules which will be found by the module finder but should
    not be included (--exclude-modules).
 3) Fixed typo in README.txt.