>Like many, I am very excitted about moving to vfp8. We have just now started to distribute or latest application to clients. Right now it is only in three sites, but by march we are scheduled to have it in another 12 sites. My question is on what is going to have to be installed on the workstations that might not already be there.
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>Our current distribution is as follows:
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>Load SQL Server 2000 database on database server.
>Create an update directory on the network.
>Run a client setup routine on each workstation.
>Application launcher checks the update directory for exe, dll and report updates, if it finds any it pulls it into the working directory of the workstation from the network.
>

I'd suggest distributing an MSI containing the VFP8 runtimes, and if VFP8 is not installed, run the MSI on the workstation; the MSI can handle updating system components correctly across platforms, which blind copy operations simply do not do right. You can modify your app launcher to handle the logic and keep of log of applied MSIs in the registry of the station under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, since installation of a runtime is a workstation rather than a user task; using an MSI also ensures that user rights requirements are met, so that you don't have to grant admin rights to every user in order to address the potential problems. It handles the side by side install issues if multiple versions of a COM component or DLL are needed on the system, and addresses the issues of proper registration, transactional installation so that if something fails half-way through you aren't left with a mess to clean up after, either.

You are dependent on installing the WIndows Installer components at least once, and updating them periodically as your MSI generator requires.

>I'm wondering if I am going to have to create a new setup routine to send to the users and have them run on each workstation. Or if it is just the vfp8*.dll's, and my launcher is compiled in vfp7; I should be able to run the launcher after putting the vfp8*.dll in the update directory along with the new exe. The launcher will use the vfp7 dlls, pull down all the new stuff, the new exe in vfp8 will now how the vfp8*.dll in the working directory and should start.
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>Thanks for any insight.
>Kirk