2017 Status and Roadmap for F# and the Visual F# Tools #2400
Comments
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I'm surprised the project system support for .NET Core / MSBuild 15-based .fsproj projects is so far down on the list. Given that .NET Core presents an opportunity to use F# (in part at least) for greenfield/rewrite projects, I would have thought a higher priority would have been given to this since it could help increase adoption numbers. |
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@GiorgioG Supporting .NET Core and MSBuild 15-based projects is the top item for @KevinRansom. I wouldn't interpret numbers in the list as an overall priority. |
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@GiorgioG I'm not sure if the order in |
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Why isn't Windows Store support (related to .NET Native support) on this list? |
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@charlesroddie Because that depends on the Core CLR team improving support for a couple of big items. dotnet native is and AOT compilation are absolutely a goal for us ... they just are longer term than this roadmap anticipates. I hope this helps Kevin |
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@georigiog @smoothdeveloper I am looking at it right now ... I am in fact torn about how to proceed. I would like to go CPS since that is the long term right plan ... however ... CPS fundamentally orders files alphabetically ... this has been a long known bug in CPS and is still not fixed. It has not been fixed because .. .csproj and .vbproj don't need it, and .fsproj doesn't load into CPS. It's been kind of a chicken and egg problem. Also CPS isn't OSS so fixing it's behavior requires somewhat more ceremony than we are used to. An alternative approach and in the short term less risky approach is to fix the F# project system to load them. However ... there are a bunch of nice but large work items that we would then not have.
However ... file ordering will work .... Anyway I am torn .... Probably an overshare .... please forgive me if it was too much info ... Kevin |
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@KevinRansom thanks, it is good to know what are the ongoing struggles. It seems most people are looking for a quick fix to get .net core fsproj to load in VS, we all understand going toward CPS is a lot more work and will bring a lot to the table. Getting out of box VS support for F# .net core projects is going to help with adoption of both .net core and F# for xplat (for windows/VS users), this is a quick win if we roughly what needs to be dealt with in current project system. Edit: should the discussion regarding that focused item go to #2394 ? |
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@KevinRansom Thanks for the details Kevin - it's helpful to understand that there are complex issues / tradeoffs / decisions to be considered. |
I'd like to do that. |
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@enricosada ... reorganizing the build is about lot more than just changing the way we build the coreclr. The current build is absolutely horrific, and we should take a stab at fixing it all up. |
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@KevinRansom i want to do that too (xplat, no hacks, from clone -> signed packages + vsix, like dotnet/cli does for example). But incrementally, first coreclr so we can clean and use sdk and unblock netstandard2,0 if needed, After that, the rest. with sdk i can remove pretty really a lot, see my PR #2250 (comment) about cleanup and future work. I have some ideas, we can discuss goals and how to proceed in another issue maybe? i dont want to monopolize this issue 😄 i am always a lot verbose |
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@enricosada I will take another look and suggest an approach. |
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Thanks for your work and achievements! |
How high priority is this issue? .Net core engenders growth in F#, but we can't do it without type providers. |
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@dbettin The breakdown is actually as follows: Erasing Type Providers (which are more common) should not require For Quotations, it's a somewhat similar story. They don't require What I think may be likely is that we'll have support for the "95% case" in these areas, but we could still be blocking key libraries and library authors if they are building full-on quotation compilers and Generative Type Providers. All of the above is assuming that we don't do any work in those areas ourselves. @KevinRansom can speak more towards the feasibility of that, but given the amount of work we're doing right now, I don't find it likely that rewrites of those areas of TPs and Quotations will come from someone in Redmond between now and .NET Standard/.NET Core 2.0. |
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Thanks @cartermp. It might be helpful to break these out into separate issues. And maybe assign an up for grabs label to issues that are not assigned to Redmond devs? |
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@Huqin-China Thanks for the perspectives from China! |
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The problem with generative TypeProviders is that ref emit on coreclr doesn't implement Save(). Ref emit is not actually a part of .Net Standard 2.0 the System.Reflection.Emit package will work with fine with .Net Standard 2.0, it's just those Apis are not part of the .Net Standard set of Apis and so ... there is no urgency to improve it's desktop compatibility. The problem for F# is that generative type providers need to produce a P.E file and since the the Save() API doesn't exist, we need a clever solution to that problem. There are in fact plenty of approaches we could take ... we just haven't settled on one that is the obvious winner. I cornered Jan Kotas in the corridor the other day and tried to push him to commit to getting us Save, he urged us to seek other solutions ... So ... we need an alternate solution, regardless until .Net Standard 2.0 we can't do much with type providers given that Type has a private constructor on the coreclr, at least in the reference assemblies it is, the implementation still has a protected constructor. So I suppose we could do type reference magic to get something working. As for up for grabs ... just express an interest in an area you want to work on and start a discussion. Helping out is really very easy. Most people just pick something they want to do and start work on it. Kevin |
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@KevinRansom Thanks. My point around the up for grabs is it would beneficial to break these up so we can start tracking these issues independently. |
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@dbettin do you mind creating the few issues you have in mind? I think with github option, the maintainers can expand the description with additional technical and contextual information. |
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This roadmap makes it appear that, for my purposes, VS 2017 RTM is really more of an alpha release for F# support, at least wrt .NET Core. Will .NET 4.6 projects continue to work, or should we stick to VS 2015 and/or VS Code? |
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.NET Framework 4.6 projects should continue to work, yes. Addressing any regressions there is a top priority for us. RC4 is a good target to validate this on. The bits in there are the bits which are shipping in VS 2017 RTM, barring some unexpected, massive error on our part. |
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Not a single word about .NET Native or UWP support. Nice! |
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@vasily-kirichenko ah ok thanks. Didn't read all the comments. |
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What about project template for F# Roslyn analyzer? |
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@xperiandri Currently that's not possible, since F# does not use the same semantic model that Roslyn uses.. What I believe you're referring to is the F# lightbulbs. These are controlled by adding a new type in the F# editor project which exports itself as a codefix provider, e.g. this. It registers an error code to trigger on, and when that code is registered by the F# diagnostics service, the code fix will trigger the lightbulb. I'm not sure that there's a good way to get a template for that going. |
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Why not? At least it can bootstrap fixes creation. |
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@xperiandri There's really two problems here, but first I'll clear this up Lightbulbs aren't tied to C#/VB. We use them today, with Roslyn Workspaces as our vehicle. F# tools now sit on the Roslyn Workspace layer, which is why we're able to use the same UI. Triggering Lightbulbs is only possible within the F# Tools repo itself right now. There is no extensibility model. That kind of model would have to use the Roslyn Analysis Platform, which we cannot interact with because we have our own semantic model. We don't share the same semantic model as C# and VB. Thus, any template could only be useful when developed within the F# Tools themselves. After that, any template would also not trigger a lightbulb by default - they're triggered by a sepcific F# error code, which you would have to supply yourself. So at best, a template would:
Given that, and that it's pretty easy to just copy/paste some code from one code fix provider and change some names around, we don't have a template. We could consider such a template for people looking to improve these specific tools as part of a Visual F# Tools Developer Guide, perhaps. |
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In his comment on 9th Feb, @KevinRansom talks about the tradeoff between CPS vs fixing the existing F# project system to load msbuild 15 files. One particular benefit of CPS was "Support for package references." Does this mean that if you don't go down the CPS route, package references will be unavailable? That's distressing but also confusing. I was under the impression that if you build from the command line, it's possible to use a PackageReference in an MSBuild-15-based fsproj now. (At least, I remember seeing an example showing this.) So if you don't do CPS, what will the situation with PackageReferences be? Will they not work? Will they work but need manual authoring of the fsproj to add them? The thing I most urgently want is the ability to use package references in an fsproj, and to have them work transitively across external projects (including C# ones). E.g., if my F# project has a reference to a csproj in the same solution, and that csproj has a PackageReference to some NuGet package, my F# project will also implicitly have access to that same package without needing to add it explicitly to my csproj. (I don't care about .NET Core by the way. I'm targetting .NET FX 4.6.1. I just want to escape from the insanity of packages.config.) |
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PackageReferences work with command line tools and ionide - just not in VS
yet.
Am 08.03.2017 1:22 nachm. schrieb "Ian Griffiths" <[email protected]
:
In his comment on 9th Feb
<#2400 (comment)>,
@KevinRansom <https://github.com/KevinRansom> talks about the tradeoff
between CPS vs fixing the existing F# project system to load msbuild 15
files. One particular benefit of CPS was "Support for package references."
Does this mean that if you don't go down the CPS route, package references
will be unavailable?
That's distressing but also confusing. I was under the impression that if
you build from the command line, it's possible to use a PackageReference in
an MSBuild-15-based fsproj now. (At least, I remember seeing an example
showing this.) So if you *don't* do CPS, what will the situation with
PackageReferences be? Will they not work? Will they work but need manual
authoring of the fsproj to add them?
The thing I most urgently want is the ability to use package references in
an fsproj, and to have them work transitively across external projects
(including C# ones). E.g., if my F# project has a reference to a csproj in
the same solution, and that csproj has a PackageReference to some NuGet
package, my F# project will also implicitly have access to that same
package without needing to add it explicitly to my csproj.
(I don't care about .NET Core by the way. I'm targetting .NET FX 4.6.1. I
just want to escape from the insanity of packages.config.)
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Thank you @forki for confirming that you can indeed use PackageReference from the command line. (As I said, I thought this was so but wasn't certain.) Rereading my comment I realised I didn't make it sufficiently clear that it's Visual Studio I'm interested in. I know it doesn't work today, but there are plans afoot to change this, and there's a tradeoff between two different ways this might be handled. And that's what I was trying to understand: I gather there's a choice between moving to CPS and fixing up the existing project system to cope with the new fsproj capabilities. Kevin's comment seemed to imply that if they go down the latter path - just fixing up the existing system - this would have an impact on package reference support in VS. I'd like to understand what that impact would be. |
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There are already commits in the roslyn repo that lead the path to CPS. It
will come eventually
Am 08.03.2017 1:47 nachm. schrieb "Ian Griffiths" <[email protected]
…:
Thank you @forki <https://github.com/forki> for confirming that you can
indeed use PackageReference from the command line. (As I said, I thought
this was so but wasn't certain.)
Rereading my comment I realised I didn't make it sufficiently clear that
it's Visual Studio I'm interested in. I know it doesn't work today, but
there are plans afoot to change this, and there's a tradeoff between two
different ways this might be handled.
And that's what I was trying to understand: I gather there's a choice
between moving to CPS and fixing up the existing project system to cope
with the new fsproj capabilities.
Kevin's comment seemed to imply that if they go down the latter path -
just fixing up the existing system - this would have an impact on package
reference support in VS. I'd like to understand what that impact would be.
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OK, so if I understand, this means that it's definitely going to be the CPS route, and F# will at some point get full support for package references on an equal footing with C#? Fantastic. Are the roslyn updates you refer to dotnet/project-system#1670 ? Is there any place I can keep track of F#'s progress towards being able to use new fsproj files from Visual Studio? I posted to this thread because when I looked in the Issues I didn't manage to find anything that was obviously tracking progress on this - Kevin's comment on this thread was the only thing I'd found. After some more digging I've found a check list of things to be done here but that doesn't look like a definitive work item for tracking this stuff - more a proposal of what one might look like. I'd like to be able to keep an eye on this partly so I can have some idea of when it'll arrive, but also so I can, if possible, try out work in progress to see if it works for me, and provide feedback if appropriate. But I've not been able to work out where I should be looking for this. |
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Yup, just to confirm that @forki is right. F# will be using CPS in Visual Studio and adopt the new MSBuild We'll also have a more definitive tracking issue once we have @brettfo working on it. We're still finalizing some things w.r.t our internal builds and release management. |
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@xperiandri Not on the immediate roadmap, but I know that @brettfo was looking at this a while back. He might pick that back up in a while. For sure, snippets are something we're lacking in right now. |
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@xperiandri the roadmap sets the general direction, and identifies the large feature areas targeted. We welcome community contributions of features that conform to the general direction we are headed whether they are called out in the roadmap or not. Similarly smaller unmentioned features may well be handled by us, en-route as it were. So that snippets, folders and context menu changes are not in the roadmap, it's because they are below the level of detail intended for it. Does that help? Kevin |
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One of the big things is that generative type providers service the wider ecosystem not just F#, they are the most important aspect in that respect. Unchecked quotations for generative providers is also something that sorely needed to avoid having to reflectively call quotation builders to build the type provider. |
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@cartermp Could you please change the number/bullet points to check boxes in the original post so that it's possible to track the current status of the individual work items? |
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Hi guys! What about automatically list members like in C# ? |
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Closing in preference to most recent announcements here #3069 |
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Closing old discussion |
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@masaeedu The VS 2017 release notes track what's available for the current non-preview release, and there are links to past release notes which contain lists of features. There is single issue to track the status of F# support for VS 2017, nor will there be. There are simply too many things to track, some of which have been in the product since its inception. |
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@masaeedu - Not to beat a dead horse, but we've been waiting for an RTM release of this since May when VS2017 first RTM'd. We were then told it would likely come in the July release of VS, we're now nearing the tail end of October with no clear idea when we'll get it. It's not @cartermp 's fault, just the reality that MS has not made it a high priority (judging by their actions, not their words.) In summary, if you want to use F#, use VSCode, it has excellent support for F#, as long as you realize it's not Visual Studio, it's a souped up text editor. |
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@GiorgioG Two things: a. Things change, such as releases, especially when things are difficult. |
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a. I understand I'm a software dev too ;) |
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@cartermp I'm looking for some kind of checklist or issue label for the VS 2017 extension that will let me distinguish "oh this just isn't implemented yet" from "oh, I'm an idiot I just have it set up wrong". If there isn't such a thing, is there an issue tracking implementation of Intellisense for I appreciate the link to the release notes, but they aren't very easy to search for what I need. |
In this case, there are three layers: F#.NET project system, which is a plugin to the bottom laterCPS (Common project system), which is inside of VS CPS has implemented a component which respects F# file ordering, but this is known as a "Data flow". It used to not respect ordering, so IntelliSense would be hosed no matter what you did. This component doesn't control the UI, it just makes sure that when we pass the file ordering down into the underlying project system, that this file ordering is preserved. CPS is closed-source and internal to VS, and with no public bug tracker. The .NET project system plugin to CPS needs to effectively wire up the UI to use that data flow when presenting F# files in compilation order. However, given that: (a) The project system now preserves the ordering of files, thus allowing IntelliSense to work (modulo our last bit of work here, which enables project-to-project references and seeing symbols from newly-added files in IntelliSense) We're not blocking on the 15.5 release to get the visual ordering in the file tree. The issue is being tracked here, and although it's still an annoyance, it's not the end of the world. We still need to get gestures added, and CPS is also looking into click-and-drag in the tree, which would allow you to order using the mouse like VS for Mac. The project system has had to deliver an immense amount of scope in a short amount of time, so issues like this which don't prevent someone from using the product aren't given top priority. But it's coming. @masaeedu My advice would be to try out VS 2017 15.5 Preview 1, which works aside from the following:
These two issues are addressed in #3777 and targeted at the 15.5 release. That said, IntelliSense works fully for .NET Core SDK-based projects in the preview, modulo those two issues. |
Current Status of F# and the Visual F# Tools per VS2017 RTM
structrepresentation of types, a newResulttype, and other areas that are “nip and tuck” in nature#r.Itemsproperty is not invoked by the Roslyn EE used in Visual StudioImmediate Roadmap for 2017
Bug fixes
Stability
Migrate the OSS Build to the latest .NET CLI and MSBuild and use the Multilingual App Toolkit (MAT) for localization builds
Support generating signed VSIXs of the latest master build, pushed directly to MyGet
Project System support for .NET Core and .NET Standard projects in F#
Full FSI support on .NET Core 2.0
#r#r’ing an assembly that targets a higher target than what FSI was launched with?Full support for F# on .NET Core 2.0 and .NET Standard 2.0
Build a Contract .dll between Roslyn and F# to remove our use of InternalsVisibleTo
OSS Engineering Efficiency and Build needs some improvements
In accordance with the above, what follows is where we expect work will come from. In the case of the OSS Community, while we don't assume work will be done for us, we anticipate continuing to receive high-quality contributions which we will gladly accept.
@KevinRansom
System.ValueTuplework to deal with its migration to mscorlib in .NET Framework 4.6.3@brettfo
@cartermp
@dsyme and the F# OSS Community
Roslyn Team
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