November 2010 F# 2.0 Free Tools Update

[ Note: if installing F# for Mono, you must download and resign with mono.snk. ]

We've just published a minor update to the F# 2.0 Free Tools release. (The free tools release includes the tools for using F# with Visual Studio 2008 and/or Visual Studio 2010 Shell)) . You can download it from the usual place. This release is a relatively minor to the previous Free Tools release, but important if you're using either WindowsPhone 7 or Mono 2.6/2.8 to execute F# code:

  • improves behavior on Mono 2.6 and 2.8, including a number of fixes to the execution of F# Interactive code, and a fix for a common hang with the /resident option
  • Adds WebRequest.AsyncGetResponse and WebClient.AsyncDownloadString to the WindowsPhone 7 FSharp.Core.dll

As with the previous free tools release, this release enables .NET 4.0 development with the MSI and ZIP releases of F# 2.0. This is an important family of releases for the F# community, as it extends the existing availability of free-for-use F# programming tools to .NET 4.0. In addition, the MSI installer can 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.

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.

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 release.

A huge thank you to Brian, Matteo, Tomas, Laurent and others on the F# team who made this happen. 

[ NOTE: If you are using F# in Visual Studio 2010 Professional or above, you can ignore this release. The version of F# supported is identical! ]

Thanks

don