>>>>PROCEDURE PMIncludeFiles
>>>>EXTERNAL PROCEDURE Somecomponent
>>>>ENDPROC
>>>>
>>>>Does that not work for you?
>>>
>>>Not in the case of
>>>

>>>EXTERNAL PROCEDURE dummycall
>>>
>>>=dummycall()
>>>

>>>There's no EXTERNAL FUNCTION declaration.
>>
>>Help says "Identifies an external procedure or user-defined function."
>
>I tested this, and tested it again now.
>Just copy those two lines into a prg and try to build a project from it.
>
>I don't care what help says. Microsoft never allocated enough money to make sure help is up to speed with the rest of VFP.

How about...

lcCmd = "dummycall()"
eval(lcCmd)

in conjunction with the external procedure? Wouldn't that allow the compiler to ignore the reference at compile/design time, but allow it to execute at runtime?