There has been a lot of talk about the state of Visual FoxPro 9 SP2. It seems like many people are not willing to upgrade unless the issues introduced in SP2 get fixed. There also seems to be some confusion about what the SP2 issues encompass; VFP9, Sedna, VFPx, etc… I plan to go through these issues over the next few days to help dispell some of the confusion and offer what solutions I can to the known issues.
Why do this? Mainly because I think many people are wrongfully swayed away from SP2, Sedna, VFPx and Visual FoxPro in general for the wrong reasons. The fix list for SP2 includes a long list of fixes that have been around for years. I think the VFP team did a great job of addressing as many issues as they could using what limited resources they had available. The unfortunate part is the limited testing this service pack received which led to a few new issues being introduced.
Right now there is a list of issues and solutions being tracked on the Visual FoxPro Wiki. Of the 20 issues that are posted (as of this writing) I would break down into the following categories:
New bugs in the VFP9 CoreNew bugs in the VFP9 XsourceNew bugs in the VFP9 Help File
I would define the “Core” as the VFP9.EXE and the distributable runtimes (VFP9R.DLL, VFP9T.DLL, VFP9RENU.DLL etc…). To me, these are the most critical issues and really the only ones to be overly concerned about. Mainly because we do not have the ability nor the rights to make changes to this part of the application.
Issues with the Xsource are not as critical because we have all of the source code for these modules and they can be updated as needed. They are even posted on VFPx and can me managed and distributed from a central location with timely updates.
I would not consider the “Help File” issues as super critcal either, for a few reasons, the most significant being that Microsoft is in the process of fixing the Help file. Special thanks to Bernard Bout for reporting these issues and being available to test the updates that are being worked on. The other reasons go along with the XSource reasons. If worst came to worse, the help file can be decompiled and we can fix it and recompile it ourselves. But in the interim we can just use the Help file from SP1, or live with it, for now. ALL of the help topics are included with the help file, the issue is missing index entries.
The 20 reported issues break down as follows:
Core – 6 issuesXsource – 2 issuesHelp File – 1 issuesOther – 11 issues
Note that as I go through these, over the next few days, some of the categories may get moved around. But at first look, this is where the issues seem to fall. The “Other” category includes issues that were not introduced in SP2, but rather issues that have been around before SP2 or are unexpected behavior, not really a bug. I don’t mean to belittle these issues here. These “other” issues should be addressed, and I will go through them, but since this writting is about upgrading to SP2, I think they should be broken out and excluded as reasons to not upgrade to SP2.
Also note that most of these issues are related to reporting. Most, if not all of them are in the “core” product and have nothing to do with the Reporting APPs. As a matter of fact, many people are using the Reporting APPs from SP2 with VFP9 SP1 and are quite happy with them. There were MANY new features added to the SP2 reporting APPs that are worth taking a look at, even if you don’t upgrade to SP2.
I promise to go into more detail in my next post. But this will give you an idea of where I’m headed and what to look forward to.
I feel very strongly that everyone should upgrade to SP2 and then determine if YOU have a real business case for NOT upgrading your clients. Rick Schummer has published a white paper on how to have SP1 and SP2 installed on the same development machine. If everyone sits around and waits for an SP3, we are going to be in big trouble. We need a definitive list of SP2 bugs so we can either determine an appropriate workaround or encourage Microsoft to follow up with their promise of support through 2014.
If you have found an issue with VFP (and it is still broken in VFP9 SP2) please report it to Microsoft, especially if it is in the “core” product. Also, if it appears to be SP2 specific, please add it to the SP2 Bug list on the Visual FoxPro Wiki and someone in the community, including myself, will try to address it.
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