Distributing VFP 8

Versions 3, 5, and 6 of Visual FoxPro had the Setup Wizard to help us distribute applications. This tool had its limitations and we now have a cut-down version of InstallShield Express instead. This is much more powerful but it's overkill for a simple job.

InstallShield leads you through a number of pages like this one. Some ask for a lot of detail, others aren't available in our Limited Edition of InstallShield. You have to fight through every page so preparing a distribution set can be a long process. The effort is worthwhile for a commercial distribution because InstallShield creates a good impression with the customer. It's hard work though if you're just trying to get Fox running on another local PC and you might find it easier to just copy the relevant DLLs across.

Help says that the following DLLs are required:

• vfp8r.dll
• vfp8t.dll
• vfp8renu.dll - this is for the English distribution

You'll also need:

• msvcr70.dll from the Windows System32 folder
• GDIPlus.dll from the same folder as vfp8r.dll

If you're using XML you'll also need these three from System32:

• msxml3.dll
• msxml3a.dll
• msxml3r.dll

Or perhaps these for VFP 8:

• msxml4.dll
• msxml4a.dll
• msxml4r.dll

For a quick-and-dirty install, just drop these into the same folder as your VFP8 executable.