The esp8266upload is command line but also creates the spiffs from the data folder. We could add a flag to tell it to use an existing spiffs. Will take a look over next few days.

You can distribute the uploader.exe so should work ok

The only thing that needs thought it discovery of where the esp tools are. This would be a simple job if our customers know where the tools are

normally c:\usesr\[username]\appdata\local\arduino15\packages\ep8266....

The ide normally passes the location to the .exe as a param so the exe doesn't currently have the intelligence to find the tools by itself.

The exe could be expanded to find the tools but that would slow down this request. Maybe you can look at copying the esp tools (espota.y and esptool.exe) and making them work in an isolated folder. Then you could put the esp8266uploader.exe in the same folder and zip for your clients (or something)

Maybe you can give this some thought on the easiest way for it to work, if it makes sense?

If you switch on verbose you will see the command and args for the tool.

I don't think you need the visual micro esp uploader.exe

Create a folder with the tools and add a .bat file to call esptool.exe

If the tool runs okay I can tell you the args to use and you can ask the user via the .bat commands for the port

Great