Can someone help me with VFP pathing and includes?

I've been writing foxpro since 2.6. For the last 15 or 20 years I have used the Visual FoxExpress framework. I guess I am so accostomed to my framework that basic foxpro things are still elusive to me. I am spending weeks struggling with some basic concepts. I am asking for help.

I have a project. The project has many prg's that I have included in the project. When I rebuild my project with the "recompile all" and "show me the errors" features on, sometimes the prg's do not get recompiled. I delete the fxp's and modify the prg by adding a comment to ensure the prg's get recompiled. That seems to work but it appears they do not get compiled because a file named myprogram.err gets created. The VFP compiler does not tell me there were any errors but I do see the myprogram.err file. The first line of executable code in this myprogram.prg is #INCLUDE WCONNECT.H WCONNECT.H is also included in my project under text files. The myprogram.err says "#INCLUDE WCONNECT.H Error in line 4: File does not exist.". I guess my first question is how can an included prg not find wconnect.h if it too is included in the project?

Thanks, John

Solution

I was also frustrated by that

sometimes the prg's do not get recompiled

issue, so I wrote a small prg (rcompile.prg) to compile all explicity. Since then, I do not trust "Recompile all" and use that rcompile.prg. Here is the code of rcompile.prg:

Lparameters tcProjectName, tlNonVerbose
If !Empty(m.tcProjectName) And Type('_vfp.ActiveProject') = 'U'
  Modify Project (m.tcProjectName) Nowait
Endif

If Type('_vfp.ActiveProject') = 'U'
  Return
Endif
Set Notify off
LOCAL ix,totalFiles
ix = 0
totalFiles = 0
For Each loFile In _vfp.ActiveProject.Files
  If loFile.Type $ 'PKV'
    totalFiles = m.totalFiles + 1
  ENDIF
endfor

? 'Total', m.totalFiles
For Each loFile In _vfp.ActiveProject.Files
  If !m.tlNonVerbose And loFile.Type $ 'PKV'
    ix = m.ix + 1
    ? m.ix, loFile.Name
  Endif

  Do Case
    Case loFile.Type = 'P'
      Compile (loFile.Name)
    Case loFile.Type = 'K'
      Compile Form (loFile.Name)
    Case loFile.Type = 'V'
      Compile Classlib (loFile.Name)
      *!*   Case loFile.Type = 'R'
      *!*     Compile Report (loFile.Name)
  ENDCASE
Endfor
Set Notify on

You either pass your project's filename to it, or there is an active project open in the project manager.

I can't answer to second part of the question, it is weird. Instead of trying to find a reason, I would have wconnect.h located in a folder that is in default search path during compilation (and development in general).

I have this set in my Tools\Options\File Locations\Search path set:

progs; forms; libs; menus; other; reports; include; bitmaps; datainclude; d:\foxyclasses\classes; d:\vfpcommonclasses

and .H files under Include folder. Having same folder structure with all the projects, this works nicely (and I can test prg, scx etc individually without a recompile all). I almost only compile the whole project just before releasing it.