Convert VFP to run on MAC ??

[TinyNinja]

Hey,

I did a quick search online and found this VFP convert in the Apple Store and was wondering if it is legit and if anyone here as used it before?

https://fmpromigrator.com/services/vfp_conversion.html#vcc

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vfp-code-converter/id416454365?mt=12

It looks cool. I don't need to run anything on a MAC at the moment but I could see the need in the coming months if I do a project for a friend.

Like to see everyone's thoughts.

 

[Mike Lewis]

I'm not familiar with either product, but a glance at their websites reveals some relevant information.

The first of the two - the VFP Code Converter - it not specifically targeted at the Mac, but it does list Filemaker Go as one of its many supported platforms. Filemaker Go is development platform for the Mac and iPad/iPhone. It is very unlikley that the Code Converter would give you a ready made Mac application, so as well as learning that product, you would also have to get to grips with developing Filemaker applications.

How well it will convert your FoxPro app - and how much extra work it leaves you to do - is something you will have to test for yourself. There is a demo version which you can try, but annoyingly the website doesn't tell you what restrictions or limitations it has.

The other product - VFP Code Converter - claims to convert PRG files to either LiveCode or JavaScript. LiveCode, like Filemaker, is a complete development platform, so again you would have to learn that product. It does have the advantage that it can target Android devices as well as the Mac and other platforms.

The website says that the product converts PRG files. It makes no mention of VFP forms, reports, classes or menus, which is probably where most of the code in your app resides.

Finally, keep in mind that neither LiveCode nor Filemaker Go are free. You will need to add their cost to that of the conversion tool.

Personally, I would be reluctant to use a tool of this type. Apart from the cost and the effort of learning the target platform, I suspect that you will have to do a great deal of work to actually get the converted application running to your satisfaction. But this is just based on my reading of their websites. If you get a reply from someone who has experience of either product, take their word rather than mind.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[Mike Lewis]

A better option for running VFP on a Mac might be to install a Windows emulator on the Mac. This is not a free option. As well as the cost of the emulator, you - or rather your users - will have to pay for a Windows licence. But it would have the advantage of not requiring any major changes to the VFP app. In theory, it should be just a matter of installing the software, and then running your app as if it was in Windows.

Also, a lot more people have experience of using emulators than of using the above-mentioned conversion tools, so it should be easier to get help.

But even this is not a perfect solution. Emulators vary in their degree of emulation, and they might not provide full compatibility with all of VFP feature. Still, it might be worth considering.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[TinyNinja]

Great thoughts Mike! Thank you, I appreciate it. I think I will go with the Mac Windows Emulator option if it ever gets to that point.

 

[Chris Miller]

Notice Both are from the same company, and the one seems to use or include the other. Well, one is a service, the other a product.

I personally don't like the style of their webpage to start with, but obviously you're free to try by their own words. I think it will show how far it gets you or not. One thing they mention, Servoy, actually is quite an old platform that offered support of VFP developers when VFP 9 was discontinued in 2010. Not only to us. But there ou have an entry point they make for FoxPro developers:

https://servoy.com/foxpro/

It's hard to go from a desktop to a web app or even a mobile app. Servoy actually doesn't make that bold statement, but mentions to add web functions to it or a portal and go a natural transition path.

For anything you plan to do from scratch, even if being a VFP expert with abilities to do this most rapidly in VFP, I'd not make VFP development the starting point for conversions to go elsewhere from there. There are so many helpful tools and platforms to start spp development.

To make something that easily integrates into anything Googlee (GMail, GDrive and their Office suite, APIs etc: Google App Sheep -

https://about.appsheet.com/home/

The same in the MS universe is Power Apps -

https://make.powerapps.com/

And there are more like that for the Facebook, Amazon AWS or other universes. Everyone wants to bind you to their platform with such tools, and they are indeed great if you want to support that platform, not just a pitfall to get more dependant.

Then there are general purpose multi platform environments, Xamarin is the first that comes to mind and was bought by Microsoft. Kotlin is another (both a programming language in itself and also a cross-platform development framework). But I merely know them bith by name, I did a little bit with Xamarin back then, but never with Kotlinn. Kotlin hasan overview, biased towards themselves, surely, but you get some pointers to others, too, and can go there yourself:

https://kotlinlang.org/docs/cross-platform-frameworks.html

In short, for cross-plattform development I'd not start in VFP, no matter how good I'm at it. Either I'd look into such a framework that offers to support multiple platforms from the start as a concept and not by conversion of something so Microsoft specific as VFP is. Or I'd develop in each native platform I'd want to support with the best acceptance and support of all native functions, no matter how close cross platform tools tell you you get in even using things like the mobile cam or GPS or whatever detail.

And for a simple app I'd perhaps decide for the web equivalent of an app - a progressive web app (PWA) Whatever runs in browsers runs everywhere and on every device. These are also thinking about mobile, not only browsers.


Chriss

 

[TinyNinja]

Thanks Chris! Really appreciate your post.

 

[ggreen61]

Before Fox Software was purchased by Microsoft, Fox was available for both the Mac and Linux platforms. It was based on FoxPro 2.0 compatible code. I had used it back around 1992 timeframe.

Greg

 

[Mike Lewis]

Greg, for what it's worth, Mac support was also present in some Microsoft versions, including Visual FoxPro 3.0. I thought of suggesting that TinyNinja considers getting a copy of 3.0 for the Mac. But that would have invalidated a huge number of language features that were added in later versions.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[Mike Gagnon]

Or you can use Remote desktop from a MAC to a windows server.



If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ184-2483 first.

 

[Chris Miller]

It was also possible to use Windows as parallel installed OS when Macs where intel based. Apple his changed its strategy towards the arm chip M1, 2nd generation M2, that's said to have beaten intel architecture in risc and emulates x86/x64 CPUs, so again you can as you plan use Windows emulators. No idea whether the capabiity of M1 to be faster than intel architecture by emulating it means Microsoft will ever support arm M1/M2 chips. I haven't seen that yet, but a VM with an intel cpu emulated could be used to install Windows.

All in all I conclude with a variety of solutions it's possible to run Windows on Macs back to over 10 year old Macbooks. And then you can also run VFP software, but only as it runs on Windows. You don't run on an otherwise original Mac desktop with other MacOS Software and integraation with Apples software suites.

The one advantage emulators have is the feature to actually do what I just negated: To look seamlessly integrated on the host system desktop. You can have a single window interface that is actually a Micorosft Windows OS window running on the usual Windows desktop but anything above, below, left or right of that Windows window is cut off, i.e. you only see that one applicaiotn window as if it runs on the MacOS desktop. But that's still just visually seamless integration. I think it already is difficult to get drag and drop between the twwo worlds going, though I know that works from a Windows system hosting Windows VNs. You might also get a file dialog seeing Mac directories or are able to share a directory on both Mac and Windows world, additional to the virtual Windows file system only seen by the emulation.

But the more you go into details that would work on Mac or Windows alone, the less likely it is integrated with such an embedded VM guest system window within the host desktop. I'd describe this as the two systems touch each other, have some shared features and not others. It might be enough, but it's not really VFP running on Mac.

The legacy versions indeed still have a footprint: The _MAC, _UNIX and also the _DOS system variables, but since many VFP versions they are all constant .F. and only _windows is .t.

The Unix version might also run on Linux, but as Linux only started 1991 and Windows purchased Foxpro to only continue with Windows versions in the 80ies, that can only work based on the compatibility of Linux with Unix, not based on a specific Foxpro version for Linux.

As I never ported a FoxPro DOS application to VFP9 and ran it in DOS or a DOS emulator to check whether then VFP9s _DOS variable becomes .T., I assume not.

Chriss

 

[Mike Lewis]

Regarding Fox running under Linux, there was a famous case some years ago. Whil Hentzen had written articles and given talks about how to run VFP apps on a Linux box. He was having dinner just before giving such a talk to a user group when he took a phone call, which turned out to be from from Microsoft's legal department. They threatened him with legal action if he went ahead with the talk. Their argument was the Visual FoxPro was only licensed to run under Windows, and running on any other platform would not be tolerated.

Whil decided to acquiesce and cancel the talk. I'm not sure if I would have done the same, but it's difficult to judge it from this distance. Needless to say, the whole thing was very controversial.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[Chris Miller]

Yes, but I was thinking of the FoxPro version for Unix, whether that would run on Linux. Linux is a Unix clone, started as a very slim version but might nowadays be much closer, close enough to support the legacy Mac version. But sure, that's not a good basis for anything new, just like Foxpro for Mac. I wonder how backwards compatible MacOS really is and whether that would even still work.

The Whil Hentzen case was about using the VFP version on the Wine emulator. I guess the point from MS was that specifically VFP versions all had the licaense agreement to only be used on Windows. So while they do nothing against Wine (WineHQ) which rebuilds a windows clone from scratch, they defended just that very slight business advantage for them to at least have Windows OS sales for users of FoxPro software.

I don't think software made with Foxpro is driving the sale of Windows OS at all. So I never understood that case.

In the end it's always best to develop Foxpro software in the latest Foxpro version, and that means developing for the Windows platform, how to enable hardware clients with other OSes has several possibilities but the best options are either getting Windows, a Windows emulation, a Windows VM to run, or actually, as Mike Gagnons said, keep it Windows and only use the foreign hardware as a client to a Windows terminal server. Not a solution for home use, when you have a PC nd a Macbook, perhaps. But it has its usage scenario, certainly.

If I think about usage scenario of conversion tools, I think they only make sense for software with a very long history, that you won't like to do from scratch for a completely other system. You'll live with some disadvantages of the conversion and you'll accept the need to continue development in that new environment after the conversion. But it's usually a decision to end VFP development and take over what you can into a new platform. It's no magic box that lets your software run anywhere just by two clicks that you could redo again and again and in parallel continue VFP development, that would be a naive idea.

Chriss

 

[TamarGranor]

I believe Mike's memory of what happened to Whil is not quite right. As I remember it, it wasn't Microsoft Legal on the phone; it was Ken Levy, who worked at Microsoft at the time. Yep, here we go:

https://www.theregister.com/2003/04/17/ms_legal_threat_derails_foxpro/

In my view, this was Ken sticking his nose where it didn't belong.

Tamar

 

[Chris Miller]

Ah, I get that he even wanted to run the IDE on Linux. Perhaps as you would still target Windows clients of users of your EXE, but have a development workstation that is rooted in the Linux platform.
The article also talks of usnig Foxpro applications on Linux, though. I'd not assume there's much need for it and as you say, Tamar, that sounds more like a personal dispute than anything else.

Chriss

 

[Mike Lewis]

Tamar, thanks for the correction. Like some other people, I had been under the impression that it was the legal people who made the phone call, but I see now that it wasn't. I think that makes it even more surprising that Whil agreed to abandon the demonstration, since it was in no sense a legal threat.

I remember wondering at the time what I would have done in the situation. (Actually, it would never have happened to me, partly because I would not have been asked to give that kind of presentation, but mainly because I make it a rule never to take phone calls during a meal.)

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[Chris Miller]

Maybe it also wasn't a dispute but a concern and well meant warning. Wasn't there another case about somebody violating NDA that got the MVP status removed? So indeed Microsoft legal is quite strict. But then WineHQ is not under any pressure as far as I see.

Chriss