Auto Updates via Version Control

[Kevin Watters]

I need guidance on an idea. (Apologies for the cross post from a competing
Python VCS list.)

I'm in a small startup, and we're working on a cross-platform multi-protocol
IM client (written in Python) with a native feel that does all the small
things right.

We're close to beta and I'm (finally) investigating a way to push updates out
to users.

I'd really like to be able to push out binary diffs. But if that's not
possible, then at least versioned individual files that stay synced with a
central update server. The ability to push frequent updates out to clients
would mean they stay fresh like web apps.

Would it be practical to use Mercurial to pull new Python bytecode from a
repository on our server?

What performance considerations would a repository of mostly binary files
introduce?

Is Mercurial too "heavyweight" for something like this?

- Kevin