Update to the F# 2.0 Free Tools Release, Corresponding to Visual Studio 2010 SP1 (April 2011 CTP)

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[ Further information on the F# Community can be found at fsharp.org ]

 

Today the F# team has released an update to the F# 2.0 Free Tools Release, last updated in August 2010.

 

This is a relatively small update to bring our free tools release into line with Visual Studio 2010 SP1, announced by Jason Zander here. Visual Studio 2010 SP1 included a relatively small number of fixes to the F# 2.0 Compiler and Library (see the Visual Studio Team description of SP1).
 

Perhaps more importantly, this release includes the core F# support to enable F# 2.0 development for Silverlight 4 and Silverlight 5 . Once you install Visual Studio 2010 SP1 (and, if using Silverlight 5, the Silverlight 5 Beta SDK and Visual Studio Tools), you can install the MSI release of the F# 2.0 Free Tools release to enable Silverlight 4.0 or 5.0 development with F# 2.0.

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As before, this release allows.NET 4.0 development with the MSI and ZIP releases of F# 2.0. This continues the availability of free-for-use F# programming tools to .NET 4.0. In addition, with this release, the MSI installer can now be used to install F# in concert with the freely available Visual Studio 2010 Shell (integrated mode). This extends the existing support for Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 Shell from previous releases.

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To use these tools for .NET 4.0 development with Visual Studio 2010 Shell on Windows, you can simply:

Other installation options are explained on the F# developer center, for example, the latest F# MSI and ZIP releases can install as a standalone compiler + libraries.

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These releases can be used with any CLI implementation, including .NET (Windows) and Mono (Linux/Mac) (some installation notes here). We recommend users of F# on Mono/Linux/Mac update to this reease.

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Additional notes:

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  •  In this release, we have removed the source code that we previously included in our MSI/ZIP releases, because we now have the Open Source Code Drop of the F# 2.0 Compiler.

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  • This release continues to include copies of FSharp.Core.dll for Windows Phone 7 and Compact Framework 2.0/3.5. These DLLs are also often copied & included in common templates for these platforms.

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  • Note that the F# core DLL is no longer included in the Silverlight Visual Studio tools themselves, largely because it is simpler for the F# team to release them independently, and this gives us consistency with our approach to Windows Phone 7 and Compact Framework 2.0/3.5.