>It would be great, if Visual FoxPro stuff which provides backward compatibility could be technically separated from newer and better version of Visual FoxPro and added to the package as separate DLL.
>So, if somebody wanted the backward compatibility then s/he could add this DLL to the project.
>More opinions?
>

I LIKE IT! As a companion to this, a syntax checker to make sure that a file is "xBASE-free" before compilation. Slimming down the runtime by separating the pieces seems like a good thing to me, as long as it's possible to cleanly factor the xBASE processing subsystem from the remaining VFP language and syntax.

One things we would have to watch, though - some of the flexibility of macro-expansion would be lost; if no xBASE compatibility support is available, and you build an xBASE statement and macro-expand it, or do a compile-on-the-fly of a .PRG, the runtime environment needs to know that you're running "xBASE-free".