Have any of you updated to VFP 10, 32/64 bit (VFP 10 64 bit is coming)?

You can contact Chen at ccb2000@163.com for more info.

We have released our 10.0.1.5 version of Lien Writer(tm) in the 32/64 bit version. It is some 50% faster than 9.2, and you can make it completely locked to avoid anyone stealing your code.

Hi,
I have not used this, but have seen it referenced from time to time.
I am curious to know what exactly is the advantage of using VFP 10, 32/64 bit by Chen?

TIA,
Steve

[Frank]

It is some 50% faster than 9.2, and you can make it completely locked to avoid anyone stealing your code.

Duh - I guess sometimes I can't see the forest for the trees! 😃

Thanks,
Steve

Hi, please show a link for a detailed webpage about the new FoxPro. Thanks

Hi Luca,

http://www.baiyujia.com/vfpadvanced/f_vfpa_about.asp

Hi Thierry,
I am much interested on a new FoxPro version, expecially if it is even more performancing than VFP 9 (!), but... is VFP Advanced 64-bit version fully compatible with West Wind Web Connection?
I asked to Chen and he answered "if it uses some .fll files and .dll files, VFP Advanced 64-bit version need the 64-bit version of the .fll files and .dll files to run."
Have anyone used VFP Advanced 64-bit with West Wind Web Connection?
Many thanks again

• .fll: found only in class wwPDFAmyuni
• .dll: wwIPstuff.dll used in many places, e.g. in wwUtils!URLDecode()

Nope and nope.

As Thierry points out Web Connection has several dependencies on 32 bit DLLs. wwIPStuff, wwDotnetBridge amongst a few of them and I doubt that COM server operation works under 64 bit.

I'd also be very wary of any claims of performance gains that aren't backed up by some proper benchmarks - while recompiled code may have some things that are faster (namely raw integer math) I doubt any of the things that matter - namely FoxPro internal feature functions and more importantly anything related to Rushmore will be any more efficient.

And again - if VFP '10' uses some reverse engineered Rushmore it's effectively an illegal product that violates FoxPro copyrights. So be careful with this stuff.

FoxPro 9 is plenty of fast already on modern hardware since it was designed for much older and slower hardware and uses current hardware efficiently. So I'm not sure what you gain by running an effectively hacked version of VFP '10' other than a great potential for 'unintended consequences' of a ported hack.

+++ Rick ---

Many thanks Rick,
I take your opinion in maximum consideration.
In fact FoxPro performances are already great.
Sincerely

Ciao Luca,

Let me express a slightly different view, and request your attention if I may;

1. OP of this thread (Franck W Moore) works in the legal area; he probably has investigated this EULA question before releasing his software under Baiyujia's VFP10.
2. Claims about intellectual rights are always subordinated to marketing and strategic rationales; as long as VFP10 keeps running on Windows, Microsoft may consider it as serving his interest: keep a Windows user base (buying new computers with Windows installed) without paying a dime for development, support and maintenance; if Baiyujia can help them continue this way, I see no reason why Microsoft would try to stop him or any of his clients.
3. Microsoft has always considered development tools as a Troyan horse to sell Windows and Office; this article by Joel Spolsky (Yale, ex. Excel team leader at Microsoft and founder of https://stackoverflow.com/ which has taken over the developer forum market in a couple of years) explains that Microsoft has sold development tools (like VFP) only to avoid "cutting off the oxygen to competitive development tools vendors" that contribute to expanding the Windows application base. Note that, competitive development tools vendors having now disappeared, Microsoft now gives away all dev tools for almost free and many of them open sourced.
4. Nobody at Microsoft (except the Fox team and Eric Rudder) has ever cared about VFP, even known the existence of VFP; I asked Microsoft's support in a competition against Java for a large account, the guys did not even know VFP was part of Microsoft's offering; many other VFP devs have done the same experience. Why would Microsoft care more today.
5. If you're really concerned that Microsoft would sue you for using VFP10 you can argue that, as if you had a car that the manufacturer sells no more spare parts, Microsoft having decided not to further adapt VFP to the tech changes, you have to adapt it yourself. The Eula does not state that, at a certain date that Microsoft decides of, you no longer can use the product of which you have a perpetual license, without limitation in time.
6. In article 4. SCOPE OF LICENSE, EULA states that "you may not work around technical limitations in the software" as described by "the software documentation", "unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation"; I would argue that: (i) documentation does not express that running on a 32-bit system is a limitation, and (ii) at least in France, laws on programmed obsolescence allow me to tamper a product that the manufacturer no longer wants to repair.
7. About performance gain, I know OP (Franck W Moore) as someone serious who would not report better performance without some background; however I agree with Rick that a proper benchmark is needed before drawing any conclusion.

We at FoxinCloud donated to Baiyujia for several reasons:

1. Admiration for their work; just don't know how they could pin down and patch bugs in VFP9.exe's binary
2. Positive signal for the VFP community, at least those who refuse to, or can't migrate out: even 64-bit won't break their system
3. We like anything that moves the lines, thinks out of the box and goes beyond what is supposed to be 'possible'

Thierry Nivelet

Ciao Thierry,
thank you very much for your detailed answer.
As I said, VFP performaces are great also with Web Connection framework so I do not feel the need of a more powerful engine.
However I do not know if VFP will run forever, maybe it could arrive a new Windows version stopping VFP to run.
In this case it would be important to have a "back door" just like the FoxPro 64 bit version of Baiyujia, or anyother one.
I have the feeling people are doing a great work at Baiyujia, so I will follow their progress in the future.
Of course any 'new' VFP version will always be compatible with Web Connection: I am very grateful to Rick, by now all my VFP projects have migrated to Web Connection getting so a "new life".
Sincerely

Resurrecting this thread because it comes up high for VFP 10 on Google. I did a virus total scan on the 64 Bit archive, which came up with some concerning results

https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/44f7369f740b0909b2b794f5c619905b06c64cc847c14f14de88c8e41b56cad5/detection

Here's a screen shot in case the URL dies

Other scanners (VirSCAN, kaspersky) did not yield any viruses.

Eric,

I wouldn't give too much credence to those virus scans especially given that the flagging tools are small not well used items. unless you see 5 or more hits and by commonly used virus scanners it's a pretty good bet that the hits are false positives.

I had similar issues with Markdown Monster a while back and wrote a blog post around the false positives - no code changes but switching to a new installer fixed this eventually which is ridiculous if you think about it.

There may be other things to be very weary about with 'Visual FoxPro 10' - like intellectual property and the fact that one guy is supporting something as complex as this based on a decompiled nearly 40 year old code base. It's impressive that it works, but not sure I would trust that...

If anybody is that desperate to get on 64 bit it's probably a good idea to look at a different platform that has proper backing and is industry supported.

+++ Rick ---

Many softwares began supported by one guy, including jQuery, and have become since widely supported.
It's just another egg and hen story, whether people want to support at first intent, or consider by principle that it must be weak or wrong.

Some softwares are still supported by one single person, and successful, Web Connect being one example out of many.

<<at least in France, laws on programmed obsolescence allow me to tamper a product that the manufacturer no longer wants to repair.>>

Not in the U.S. The owner of IP technically does not lose his rights if he no longer wishes to repair/maintain.

We're talking about a very different level of scale here. Comparing something like Web Connection or jQuery to the complexity of maintaining a general purpose programming language that includes a high performance database engine, a GUI, a Reporting engine, a COM subsystem etc. etc. is not anywhere on the same page. While Web Connection is very big as it has grown, it's a tiny dot compared with the amount of code and things that have to be working in unison to compare to a tool like FoxPro.

+++ Rick ---

Thierry,

Usually I agree with you, but in this case I believe Rick is right. It seems pretty risky to use something like "VFP 10" for any business critical software for all the reasons Rick outlined.

If ever you take a closer look at Chen’s site, you’ll understand that he patches the VFP exe once loaded into memory, and/or distributes a patched VFP exe, without decompiling VFP. This way 30+ bugs were corrected such as the phantom break points that anyone using breakpoints in the debugger has at least once experienced.

This is why Baiyuja speaks of ‘VFP advanced’ and not VFP 10 as the title of thread mistakenly asserts.

WRT to using VFPA in production, I know several companies who distribute their software under VFPA 64, and have been doing so for months (eg. the OP). I rely more on such experience than on mere opinions.

I never found anyone using it for real production. I would be glad to speak with somebody who does it and see what kind of experience they had.

The OP, Franck W Moore, lienwriter (not sure he follows this thread)

I haven't looked yet, but is it just the development environment that's enhanced, or does it need a new runtime for the compiled apps?

Eric

I am interested it in solving the VFP 9 SP2 but where you use a mouse to select an item in a combo box and it doesn't select.

We are moving our UI away from the desktop app but the app needs to be functional for a long time in the transition. I know VFP Advanced addresses this however I am wary of all the things discussed here. Does anyone know another fix for this?

As far as VFP performance, that's not an issue for us at all.

VFPA = VFP9 + ~ 40 bug fixes

IDE is enhanced and production requires VFPA runtimes

FWIW, I'll be doing a session about VFPAdvanced at the 2019 Southwest Fox. I hope we can continue this lively discussion there!

Bottlenecks for us are large query speed (memory handling?) and the 2 gig limit. Does this product address those issues (or have plans to)?

I tried to install both 32/64 bit downloaded from website .. but on installation first step giving me an error 'File Version Error'

I have VFP9.2 SP2 installed

please suggest

Make sure that you have the very last version ov VFP9, 7423. You can check using ?Version().

Tore - by chance do you have a link to download vfp 9 7423 ?

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/visualstudio/foxpro/mt490121(v=msdn.10)

And this is where you download the very latest Help file: https://github.com/VFPX/HelpFile

Thanks so much!

For anyone looking, here is the working version of the last version of vfp service pack 2

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=13959

Sorry, unfortunately Microsoft has deleted a lot of "old" material. You can download SP2 here from my website.
Please tell me the result, since I just uploaded the file, and would like to know for sure that it's really the correct version.

I just installed it and unfortunately, it is reported as Visual FoxPro 09.00.0000.5815 for Windows

That's what I suspected. The thing is, Microsoft had several patches before they didn't provide any more. And I am not able to remember the exact process to upgrade properly.

Download this patch, which is the very latest, and should report 7423.

Please report the result, so that I can make a description of the upgrade process available for everyone.

Yes sir!

Visual FoxPro 09.00.0000.7423 for Windows is now installed on my dev laptop.

The patch included a collection of all the yummy goodness that all diehard VFP devs should have.

I am wondering if these will cause issues on a production dev server that runs WWWC. For example the OLEDB provider. We use odbc with mysql as our upsized db choice.

Good to know! 😃 There are still a few issues with 7423, some of which are fixed in Chen's "VFP10".

For the remaining issues with VFP9 SP2, check http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~VFP9SP2BugList~WIN_COM_API.

Hi Tore

I have tried to use your VFP9 SP2 from your latest link but I get an error when running it.

"The upgrade patch cannot be installed by the Windows installer because the program to be upgraded may be missing or the upgrade patch may update a different version of the program.......etc."

Now when I run my previously working VFP9 I get "Resource file version mismatch"!! I was running version 09.0000.2412.

What am I missing here.

Thanking you in advance

Des.

Sorry. I have no idea. Try to re-install, first VFP9 and then SP2.

Thank you for the reply sir.

I have reinstalled VFP9 but no luck. Maybe my version is too old. Is there a newer open source download for VFP out there?

There's no open source version of VFP9.

Hello there,
I know this might be too late for this but I post it in case it can help someone.
I got just curious to test VFPA after I heard about it for the second time in SWFox 2020 sessions and I tried to install it and got the same "File Version Error". Hope you can get it done by trying this.
So here is what you need:

Install VFP 9.0 and Service Pack 2
Download VFP 9.0 SP2 Hotfix3 [9.0.0.7423 VERSION] zip file from http://baiyujia.com/f_download.asp and follow the instruction in the README file(Just make sure you follow it line by line) and then,
Download and install VFPA again from http://baiyujia.com/f_download.asp

We basically need to replace some files in the following folders with the new ones from VFP 9.0 SP2 Hotfix3 [9.0.0.7423 VERSION]:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Merge Modules" and
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VFP" and
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual FoxPro 9"

It's my bad, not getting used to read README files yet! Haha!
Good luck,
Kathy

Hey,

Thanks to this thread I understood about VFP 10 and I'm more that excited about it. The biggest issue we are currently facing running our web app on VFP9+WWWC is the 2GB limit of the dbf/fpt files. And Chen is promising that its going to be fixed in 10.1 ! This news is WOOW to us...but the question remains...is this legal in US at all? Should we contact MS before we ever consider using his build?

Oh, and do you know when Mr. Chen will make his latest 10.1 version available for download? I installed the 32-bit version today and it still says 10.0

Dexter