Getting started with F# and Visual Studio Code on Windows – Part II Installation development environment

Part I Introduction
Part II Installation development environment
Part III Create, run and debug a F# Console application

The initial goal was to do a simple Hello World with F# + Suave, I quickly found out my initial dev rig had some issues. So, I decided to start with a clean Windows Virtual Machine and then install it piece by piece, starting with Visual Studio Code. This results in a list of components that might not all be need to be installed, but I think like this you’ll have good a base to build applications on .Net 4.6 and .Net Core.

There are at least two ways to create a basic project. One is to use to .Net core CLI, the other, what drove this blog post, is the functionality provided by Ionide-FSharp and the Command Palette of VS Code. This means pressing CTRL + Shift + P and selecting/typing F#: New Project. I didn’t create a .Net Core project yet, but an installation of the .Net core was needed to get things working.

The libraries:

• Visual F# 4.0 (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=48179)
• Build Tools 2015 (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=48159)
• .Net Core Installation (https://www.microsoft.com/net/download/core)
• Net 4.6.1 SDK (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49978)

Visual Studio Code

• The IDE (https://code.visualstudio.com/download)
• Ionide-fsharp
• Ionide-FAKE
• Ionide-Paket
• C#

The next bits I didn’t install initially, the sample in the next blog could run without out it (works on .Net 4.6.1). I think you’ll need this to build F# applications that use .Net Core.

• F# 4.1 Core SDK (http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/3/D/F3D6045E-4040-4058-ADAD-2698F1793CBC/Microsoft.FSharp.SDK.Core.msi)
• Build Tools 2017 (https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/#build-tools-for-visual-studio-2017)

With this I eventually could do create, run and debug a Hello Worldish console application.