>>Here's something I run from the environment manager's script - passing the project's name as a parameter:
>
>Essentially CodeBook does something like this when the app is started along with looking up the pjx for setting the classlibs too.

True, but it takes some metadata with it to do this in the exe. For IDE, I think it uses a hardcoded set of paths (OK, don't know of CodeBook itself, just VFE, but I guess the chip doesn't fall too far off the block).

>Oh! I start the app in a separate instance of VFP for all purposes when things go wrong the deve IDE stays intact

Don't know whether it's worth it... if anything goes a bit south - path lost, stuck objects, anything - I just quit and reload. My machine isn't young anymore, but reloading VFP still takes less than a second (I've set win+f key for it :).