Restarting a self-updating python script

Question

I have written a script that will keep itself up to date by downloading the latest version from a website and overwriting the running script.

I am not sure what the

Answer 1

The cleanest solution is a separate update script!

Run your program inside it, report back (when exiting) that a new version is available. This allows your program to save all of its data, the updater to apply the update, and run the new version, which then loads the saved data and continues. To the user this can be completely transparent, as they just run the updater-shell which runs the real program.