FSharp Interactive (fsi) as a sdk tool

[enricosada]

The .net sdk tools give lot of benefits:

• xplat ready (are just netcoreapp1.0 console app)
• no boostrapping issues (are downloaded on dotnet restore step)
• easy discoverability (dotnet fsi)
• is a shared app, so minimal size (no coreclr, use installed runtime)
• fsi version can be changed just changing the package version (or pinned to a specific version)

And fsi as normal netcore console app give others:

• can be published as standalone, so contains coreclr/everything per os, so just fsi (or fsharpi)
• easy to package per os

Blockers:

• https://github.com/dotnet/cli/issues/4722 atm .net cli require dotnet- prefix for tools, so a wrapper is needed (useless) or rename (annoying)

[enricosada]

Not next preview4, but the one after will support global commands.
So fsi can be installed once like dotnet install fsi --global , and works with dotnet fsi or maybe directly fsi

[matthid]

Not next preview4, but the one after will support global commands.

@enricosada can you provide more information about this? (A link for example?)

[enricosada]

closing as tracked in visualfsharp repo, ref dotnet/fsharp#3069