Somewhere at the beginning of your main.prg add a property to the _screen object that holds the client path.

_screen.addproperty("ClientPath", addbs(JustPath(Sys(16))))

Then use this property for any pathing operations that your application does requiring the client path. _screen.clientpath can then also be used for further environment set up such as in the case of SET DEFAULT, SET PATH, etc.

Lastly, another trick that I have found comes in handy is to test the _vfp.startmode to see whether the application is being run from the main.prg or from the compiled exe. If _vfp.startmode returns 0 then you are running the main.prg directly rather than the exe. This greatly simplifies the process by which certain things are set up and conditional code is run when debugging the application as opposed to the released exe.