VFP Solution Explorer

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There’s been a few discussions lately about a Solution Explorer for VFP (see Craig Boyd’s mention here for example). I note that Craig Bernston is working on one and there are probably others out there.

Here’s a link to a presentation Scott Scovell gave at OzFox last year and then re-presented at the Sydney VFP UG this month.

Scott is planning to open it up to the community later this year, and will be asking for suggestions shortly. Beta 1 should be out before the end of the year. Part of the aim is to make this an example of Good Practice development (I’ll be blogging more about this in the coming weeks, and comparing it to Best Practice) that guides developers on how to write ‘proper’ applications – there seems to be too much ‘quick and dirty’ code out there in our opinion.

Another aim is to make it as extensible as possible so that anyone can write Add-ins for it. There will be a big focus on this architecture initially. Interfacing to Visual Studio Team System is high priority on our list also.

It is hard to gauge how much interest there ‘really’ is for the whole Solution Manager concept – feel free to leave a comment, link to this or email me (cb@talman.com.au) if you have any thoughts. We’ll be pushing on regardless, but will be taking on board community comment very seriously.

8 comments

  • Absolutely outstanding! Standing ovation from over here. Looks great, and assuming that the presentation wasn’t all vapor-ware, I’m looking forward to seeing this, and even more so to using it. There is definitely an interest in this sort of thing (the existing project manager is an eyesore and doesn’t do much for increased production – explorer is almost as good if you have your project laid out right), but a replacement for the project manager has to be done right and look right and act right. That presentation sure whet my appetite for more. Thanks for the heads up Craig, I can’t believe I didn’t hear about this before now.

  • Absolutely outstanding! Standing ovation from over here. Looks great, and assuming that the presentation wasn’t all vapor-ware, I’m looking forward to seeing this, and even more so to using it. There is definitely an interest in this sort of thing (the existing project manager is an eyesore and doesn’t do much for increased production – explorer is almost as good if you have your project laid out right), but a replacement for the project manager has to be done right and look right and act right. That presentation sure whet my appetite for more. Thanks for the heads up Craig, I can’t believe I didn’t hear about this before now.

  • I’m definitely on board! I’d love to see this tool as soon as it’s ready for posting, and expect to contribute as much as I can to the development.

  • I’m definitely on board! I’d love to see this tool as soon as it’s ready for posting, and expect to contribute as much as I can to the development.

By Craig Bailey

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