How to Setup Visual Studio 2017 or 2019 for F#

If you want to try F# programming in Visual Studio 2017 (or 2019 for that matter), here’s what you might want to do to optimize Visual Studio to run optimally on your machine.

1. From the menu, go to Tools and select Options.
2. Under Debugging, set the Enable script debugging to True.
3. Under Misc, set 64-bit F# Interactive to True (if you use 64-bit Windows OS).
4. Set F# Interactive options to the following:

       --optimize- --readline+ --debug+ -d:TRACE
       

5. Set Shadow copy assemblies to True and click OK.

   

This “once and forget it” setup serves the following purposes:

1. Enable you to debug F# in Visual Studio and run it as a 64-bit process (better).
2. Set Visual Studio to output trace messages within F# scripts. You can also check the F# Interactive Options and the compiler options for more details.
3. Set the referenced assemblies not to be locked by the F# Interactive process.
4. Next, scroll up to Text Editor and expand on the F#.

5. Under General, check the Line numbers and click OK.

   

One more tip with F# project, when creating a new F# project you can choose between .NET Core or .NET Standard. But you can also use the .NET Framework for F# Console Application. Just make sure you select Visual F# on the left-pane of the new project window, then you can select the .NET Framework you want to use for your project.

Further Reading

Get Programming with F: A guide for .NET developers
F# Interactive Options
F# Compiler Options
Seq, List, Array, Map, Set. Which One to Use?