Announcing the F# 3.0 Open Source Code Drop

 

Note: See the F# Software Foundation for the latest on Open Source and Cross-Platform F#

As announced by the Visual F# team today at StrangeLoop 2012, the open source code drop for F# 3.0 is now available!

This code drop comes right on the heels of the release of F# 3.0 as part of Visual Studio 2012, and the Free Tools for F# for use with Visual Studio 2012 Express for Web. We have also recently released some great new samples showing the uniquely powerful features of F# 3.0.

 

The F# 3.0 open source code drop augments the commitment Microsoft make to F# through Visual F# in Visual Studio 2012. From an engineering perspective, one major reason we’re doing this code drop is tool development - a source drop enables the F# community to develop and contribute a range of tools for F#. These can be UI tools such as code visualizers, or editing tools such as refactorings, or new ways of executing, hosting or interpreting F# code, or indeed whole new F# editing experiences. The F# community use the code drops to help make F# available for a broader range of environments including Mono, MonoDevelop, Mac and Linux.

 

The source code is under the Apache 2.0 license and is published as part of the F# PowerPack codeplex project, which is also under the Apache 2.0 license.

 

If you want to use F# 3.0 today on Windows, you should use one of the installations of Visual Studio 2012 available at the F# MSDN Developer Center.

 

If you would like to join the F# Open Source Community and help bring F# to a wider range of platforms, you can join the discussion group. The community do most development on GitHub - they take the drops of the F# compiler from the Visual F# team from CodePlex and incorporate them into the GitHub repository. 

The Visual F# team use a “code drop” model, where we make available versions of the compiler+library code logically matching each release of the F# language itself. In the F# team, releases of F# have so far been matched to coincide with releases of Visual Studio itself: using this release cadence simplifies our development processes and gives clarity to language versioning. This means the code we are making available today is for the F# 3.0 language, released in August 2012.

 

As this release is a code drop, it does not contain binaries for the release. This means you still get F# from fsharp.net, so the place to “get” F# doesn’t change with this release.

  • To get or learn F# 3.0, or learn why F# is important, go to fsharp.net
  • To use F# 3.0 in Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Studio 2010, including with the free tools, go to fsharp.net
  • To get the compiler+library source code drop, go to the F# PowerPack and look for directory compiler3.0

 

Enjoy!

The Visual F# team