Saturday, December 30, 2023

Introducing FoxGet Package Manager

If you've worked with Visual Studio, you've likely used NuGet, which is a package manager for .NET. The idea is that you can search for libraries you'd like to add to your application, download and install them, and then have them managed (automatically download again if files are missing, update to a new version, etc.).

FoxGet is a new tool that's the VFP equivalent of NuGet. You run FoxGet when you want to add a library to an application. You search for a library you're interested in and if one is found, you can download, install, and add it to your project with a single mouse click. Of course, you'll have to do the coding part such as calling the library yourself.


FoxGet is available now at https://github.com/DougHennig/FoxGet. In a little while, it'll be available via Thor Check for Updates. All you need is FoxGet.app. There are currently installers for 24 popular VFP open source libraries.

To use FoxGet, open the project for the application you want to add a library to and DO path\FoxGet.app, where path is the folder where you placed FoxGet.app. If you installed it using Thor Check for Updates, you can choose FoxGet Package Manager from the Thor Tools, Applications menu. Select a library (also known as a package) and click Install. FoxGet downloads just the necessary files (no samples or documentation), puts them into a subdirectory of a new Packages subdirectory of your application folder, and adds the necessary files to your project. Uninstalling is just as easy: select the package and click Uninstall.

I look forward to any feedback you have: create issues or discussions in the GitHiub repository.

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