ok, so the problem seems to be there is aline in py2deb line 90 which is a new check to see if the path it's been passed starts with a /
the problem here is that the py2deb script given in the devel pages which were linked to earlier says to set the dir to "src"
where src is a subfolder of the current folder holding your project.

the check is wrong because the text says DON'T start with a / but the it actually checks you MUST start with a /

so I reversed the logic, but it then immediately falls over with the subfolders of src which it gets pass with the leading /

so I just commented out the whole check and everything appears to run fine. I'm not sure what this was trying to protect against, but it's broken.