>>A key problem with ISE and VFP9 is that of the dependencies among MSMs ...
>>Installshield hand passes the explanation of why this happens to the authors of these packages ... Can the package authors explain? I wonder.

>John,
>
>What Installshield has to do with that? The MSM packages for VFP are built by MS. VFP7 didn't have such dependency. It was added first for VFP8.
>You may want to take a look at MS Orca tool that allows to view and edit merge modules. See http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~OrcaEditor for more details.

Hi Sergey

I think this is the point I was trying to overturn. In the absence of authoring standards each side can say 'we only do X, it's the other guys who have caused the problem'. In this case, it feels like the package authors got handed the job on a Friday afternoon. (Well they sure didn't read the foxwiki recommendations. Anyway is there a standard or best practice protocol or not?)

Orca would need an overhaul for me to dare to use it. One observation: just reading an MSM in this ancient tool changes the file date - after this you can't tell which is the latest MSM. Clever, eh.

Let me suggest MS and IS are like cooks and waiters on this issue. We poor mugs don't care who gets the food onto the plate, we just want to pick from the menu and get what we said we wanted.

Regards
John