Back in March of 2008 I wrote a white paper to help Visual FoxPro developers install Visual FoxPro 9 Release to Manufacturing (RTM), Service Pack 1 (SP1), and Service Pack 2 (SP2) all on the same computer. At the time I hoped the readers found the information presented in the white paper a useful guide in getting the different versions of Visual FoxPro 9 installed and working on their development machine. The main reason I wrote it was to encourage developers who were hesitant to install Visual FoxPro 9 Service Pack 2 to get it installed and begin the testing process with their apps. The reputation of VFP 9 SP2 was not all that positive as there were some bugs that made it challenging when released.
Over the years I have updated the white paper to include the VFP 9 SP2 hotfixes, the Fox Community supported VFP 9 Help file on VFPX, highlight some issues with the Virtual Store when upgrading VFP 9 to the latest Service packs, and corrected some bad Web links along the way. Several people have contributed feedback and suggestions along the way.
In the past few months I have talked with several developers who are still running the original VFP 9 SP2 release, building apps, and deploying them without the VFP 9 SP2 hotfixes. I wanted to refer them to the white paper on the White Light Computing Web site, but I knew recently that the white paper became inaccurate. So I took some time this evening to update it and get it posted.
The reason for the update is that the VFP 9 SP2 hotfix downloads hosted on Microsoft’s Code Gallery Web site disappeared when Microsoft killed the Web site. All the hosted files were removed. The Fox Community jumped into action as soon as this became known and started a new project on VFPX to host this very important VFP 9 SP2 Hotfix download. Additionally, I reviewed the entire white paper, added download information for the VFP 9 Reporting Applications (also a VFPX project) to fix some user interface nits and an important hi-resolution monitor bug fix, fixed a couple bad links, and updated some figures and folder names to make it more current from the original writing in 2008. I also adding some marketing materials for the books I have written over the last 15 years.
This white paper has become more than a guide to set up different folders for the different VFP 9 versions. It also is current documentation on where to find all the core Visual FoxPro 9 download files.
I certainly hope some of you have found this white paper useful over the years (hard to believe it has been 7 years since I originally wrote it). If you have not had a chance to get the latest hotfixes for VFP 9, make sure you follow the links in this blog and go get them installed. I personally have seen the nasty reporting bug fixed in this build. With this bug fixed and all the improvements from VFPX over the years, I find VFP 9 SP2 very reliable and stable.
