Who we are | Mesquite IT
Home › Who we are › What's New? › Update 2/5/12 Mesquite IT at the San Diego Visual FoxPro User Group

Update 2/5/12 Mesquite IT at the San Diego Visual FoxPro User Group

Last Update Feb 5, 2012


9/9/2010


Developer Tools


Hello,
 My name is Claude Nikula. (Some of you know me of as Nick.) I am the owner of Mesquite Information Technologies, LLC.
I have been programming for over twenty years, and one thing that I have learned is that in order to be more productive you have to learn how to use tools. Especially if you are managing large development teams, or you own your own consulting company. So, please come and join me at the San Diego Visual FoxPro User Group Thursday September 9th 2010. I will be demonstrating some of the software development tools that I use to be more productive. Some of the tools are home grown Visual FoxPro tools, and others are open source. I also use third party development tools.


Here is a list of some  of the tools that I will be reviewing at the meeting.


FREE Home Grown VFP Tools:



  • Create Project Folders (CreateProject.prg) - Automat building your project folders

  • ProjectHook - The ProjectHook object allows programmatic access to events that occur in a project

  • IntelliSense – Mange your own custom InteliSense to automate every day comments and expressions in your code and class’s

  • Project Documenting Machine - PDM is a tool which helps you to create a complete HTML documentation of your Visual FoxPro project. It creates a detailed description of all databases, classes, forms, programs, reports and labeles. It is written in VFP

  • Task Tracker – Mesquite IT very own Task Tracker allows to track your pending task and will return you back to your code in process

The Project Hook, InteliSense, and Task Tracker all work in conjunction with each other.
Take the time to review the InteliSense (Foxcode.dbf) commands and your productive will increase.


Here are some of the commands


CL – Comment Block with task number derived from the Project Hook
CB – Comment Block with task number, Class or program info, Date, Description, Parameters details
CLX – Comment Line with no details
CLS – Comment Start Tag (Notice: most be set in the Foxcode table)
CLE – Comment End Tag ((Notice: most be set in the Foxcode table)
Mittask – Will provide a Task Comment in your code and insert Task Comment into the Task Tracker
CS – Copy table structure and pasted into you code. (Notice: you most have a table open and select in order for this to work.
CA – Inserts a ComAttrib array into your code. This can be a method or property.
DC – Insert a class definition into your code
IFI -  LOCAL declaration enabled IntelliSense for the object anywhere in this class    
PH – Insert a program header comment with may details.


There are many more feature for you to explore. If you do not wish to use the Project Hook you can disable the code in the FoxCode.DBF table that I provided for you.


The Task Tracker is still in development. Here is a list of features I am working on.



  1. Make it project independent

  2. Create Microsoft Outlook 2010 Tasks

Free: Open Source Tools:



  • Update 2/5/12  Flyspray -  Provides software developers with an easy way to track and submit bugs, defects and enhancements during the development and maintenance of software applications.

  • VirtualBox - Is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use

  • WinMerge - Is an Open Source differencing and merging tool for Windows. WinMerge can compare both folders and files, presenting differences in a visual text format that is easy to understand and handle

  • Feng Office - Manage your projects and business services Collaborate with your team and your customers Organize and share documents and files

  • Drupal - Is a free software package that allows an individual, a community of users, or an enterprise to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Hundreds of thousands of people and organizations are using Drupal to power an endless variety of web sites, including

Third Party Tools:



  • Skype - Voice and video calls to anyone (FREE)

  • Microsoft Visual SourceSafe 2005 - (VSS) is a source control software package oriented towards small software development projects

  • Microsoft Office

  • Microsoft SharedView - (FREE)  Is a fast, easy way to share documents and screen views with small groups of friends or coworkers; anytime, anywhere. Use SharedView to put your heads together and collaborate - create, convey, and communicate…across physical boundaries, through fire walls, and down to the smallest details.

  • Microsoft Projcet - Delivers more with at-a-glance resource management and team-collaboration tools

  • West Wind HTML Help Builder - Is a documentation system using a structured interface for creating documentation for your applications and components


There are many more tools out there, this should get you started.