Abstract: The present invention discloses a method, apparatus, and article of manufacture for distributing a software application residing on a network, from a source computer coupled to the network, to a remote computer via electronic mail. At the source computer, the present invention identifies the software installation components that reside on the source computer. These software installation components are used to install the software application. The identified software installation components are compared to the remote computer's software installation components. This comparison determines which software installation components are missing from the remote computer. To provide the files required for installation of the software application, the present invention transfers the missing software installation components from the source computer to the remote computer.