hubFS: THE place for F#

Hi, I've question about VS 2008 x 2010 beta F# interoperability. Is possible to use same F# project in VS 2008 and 2010 solution? Is the F# build in VS 2010 beta same as in current VS 2008 plugin? And what about Silverlight 2, F# PowerPack and F# parser library - can we use them in both versions of VS?
I want to upgrade to VS 2010 on my machine, but I'm also currently cooperating with my fellow schoolmates on one F#/Silverlight2 project, all of them are using VS 2008 and I can't expect, that all of them will move to VS 2010 in next day's :)

The solution files and binaries are incompatible between VS 2008 and VS 2010. You could install VS 2010 Beta 1 in parallel, but I wouldn't yet recommend it as your primary development IDE.

Sounds like you want to stick with VS2008 for now.

• .fsproj files are not compatible.  This is a Visual-Studio- / MSBuild- ism.  When you open a project created with VS2008 inside VS2010, the 'upgrade wizard' will upgrade the project in place, and this will make it unusable in VS2008.
• We have not yet posted the PowerPack binaries that are compiled for .Net 4.0, so if you need the PowerPack, VS2010 is a non-starter for the next few days until we get the PowerPack posted.
• F# in VS2010 Beta1 targets only .Net 4.0 Beta1, whereas F# in VS2008 targets .Net 2.0/3.0/3.5.

See also

http://lorgonblog.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!701679AD17B6D310!1327.entry

Regarding PowerPack - isn't it possible to take the source code from 2008 version and compile it with VS2010? I did that, and then used the produced DLL to compile FParsec successfully. Didn't check if it actually works, though, but what potential problems are there?

FParsec doesn't need the PowerPack.

If you comment out the (non-essential) "StructuredFormat" related code from primitives.fs and primitives.fsi, and put  "[<CompilationRepresentation(CompilationRepresentationFlags.Instance)>]" above the ToString override in error.fs and error.fsi, FParsec should compile again.

I'm working on a major update of FParsec which I hope to be able to release on CodePlex early next week.

- Stephan

int19h:

Regarding PowerPack - isn't it possible to take the source code from 2008 version and compile it with VS2010? I did that, and then used the produced DLL to compile FParsec successfully. Didn't check if it actually works, though, but what potential problems are there?

This should probably be fine, we just assume most users don't want that hassle.  Soon when we drop the 'official' version you probably want that in case there are any differences somehow.

brianmcn:

• F# in VS2010 Beta1 targets only .Net 4.0 Beta1, whereas F# in VS2008 targets .Net 2.0/3.0/3.5.

Well, that answered my question. I suppose we would just migrate to current version of F# on VS 2008 for now.

Stephan:

put  "[]" above the ToString override in error.fs and error.fsi

I was actually wondering if override is needed in the .fsi at all. Since it's already defined by the base class, the fact that it's overriden there is an implementation detail, no? And I should still be able to call ToString on instances of that type even if I don't have it in the .fsi ...

I was going to use the FSharp.PowerPack in a presentation next week. How would I go about building the PowerPack? Or should I just stick with VS2008?

Cheers!

int19h, you're right, the override declaration in the fsi is only for documentation purposes.

I was able to compile my project with VS 2010 and the PowerPack from the CTP, but it would not run because of some "missing function" runtime exceptions.

marekpetrik:

I was able to compile my project with VS 2010 and the PowerPack from the CTP, but it would not run because of some "missing function" runtime exceptions.

Did you just take the PowerPack assembly from the 2008 CTP as is? That won't work for sure (and the compiler will even warn you about that, saying that PowerPack is compiled against different version, and is incompatible).

FYI, we finally have the PowerPack binaries for VS2010/.Net4.0 Beta1 online:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e475a670-9596-4958-bfa2-dc0ac29b4631&displaylang=en

The long term plans are still to have this up on CodePlex (as mentioned a while back on Don's blog

http://blogs.msdn.com/dsyme/archive/2008/12/10/fsharp-to-ship-as-part-of-visual-studio-2010.aspx

) but we wanted to go ahead and make the binaries available in the meantime, to unblock those who want to use the PowerPack on .Net 4.0 Beta1 right now.  Sorry it took so long to come online!

Very cool.

I originally searched for how to get the Power Pack for .NET 4.0 from Google and I ended up at this site to download it - http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/F-Sharp-PowerPack-Download-130111.html

The binaries there seemed to be recognised inside a script file in VS2010 but when I tried to reference the Power Pack dll from fsi 1.9.6.16 the dll wasn't loaded with this error:

error FS0191: Error opening binary file 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft F#\FSharp-PowerPack-4.0-Beta1\FSharp.PowerPack.dll': MapViewOfFile(0x80070008)

When I download from the Microsoft site - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/thankyou.aspx?familyId=e475a670-9596-4958-bfa2-dc0ac29b4631&displayLang=en - it all worked fine.

Cheers,
Mark

---

Mark Needham
Application Developer, ThoughtWorks
http://www.markhneedham.com/blog