The latest compiled version of FRAM can be downloaded here. Documentation on FRAM can be found on the documentation page.
Requirements:
Visual Studio can be configured to work as an IDE (interactive development environment) for multiple languages. Working in FRAM's source code requires Visual Studio to be configured to work with Visual Basic / .NET.
When prompted in the installation, .NET desktop development at minimum needs to be chosen.
The rest of the installation can be completed by repeatedly clicking the Install button.
Downloading the source code from Github can be downloaded in a zip archive directly from Github.
The source code can also be download via the normal Github cloning workflow
Visual Studio is an IDE. It allows you to edit, debug, and compile Visual Basic code - along with other languages.
After Visual Studio is installed navigate to the unzipped FRAM folder and find FramVS.vbproj. This is the project file for the source code and opening it either in File Explorer or Visual Studio will open the source code in the IDE.
FRAM is currently coded in Visual Basic 6, which is no longer supported by Microsoft. Luckily the newer versions of Visual Studio will upgrade the source the first time it is opened.
This prompt currently appears only once, and after clicking OK a report is displayed which can be then closed.
The dubbuger is near the top of the screen. Pressing the ▶ Start button will run the source code in debug mode. The highlighted view pane on the right is the collection of "forms" (FVS_NAME.vb) associated with the source code and both house the user interface and code.
FRAM makes ubiquitous use of global variables throughout the source. These are defined and initialized in FarmVars.vb
Most of the code handling FRAM's calculations can be found in the FramCalcs.vb module, with the RunCalcs() subroutine providing the main processing loop.