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Announcing F# Tools for Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web!

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The F# team is excited to announce that F# Tools for Visual Studio 2012 Express for Web is now available!

Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web (available here) is a free development environment that programmers can use to build projects such as ASP.NET applications and Windows Azure cloud services. This F# Tools release adds in F# 3.0 components, such as the F# 3.0 compiler, F# Interactive, IDE support, and new F# features such as type providers and query expressions.

Note: if you already have Visual Studio 2012 Professional or higher, you don’t need to install this—you have everything you need as part of your existing installation.

Further information on using F# across various platforms can be found at fsharp.org.

Video Intro to F#

Check out the video F# 3.0 information rich programming at the Visual Studio Launch Site.

Quick Start: Installing F# Tools for Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web

Launch the Web Platform Installer from here and click Install.

Or, if you already have Web Platform Installer on your machine, you can also launch it and search for “F#”:

installer

Add that component, and click Install. Any dependencies you need, such as Visual Studio 2012 Express for Web, will be automatically detected and installed. The online registration grants a free product key, and you’ll be using F# with Visual Studio in no time.

It’s that easy!

Data at Your Fingertips with F# 3.0

Now it is easier than ever to access many important data sources, using a set of built-in type providers for SQL databases and web data protocols. These providers make it simpler, more uniform, and more intuitive to access data sources. Plus, it’s an extensible mechanism, so you can even write your own type provider.

For instance, using the built-in OData type provider, you can query the Netflix OData catalog:

query the Netflix OData catalog

 

You get IntelliSense as soon as you put in the URL for the Netflix catalog and start writing the query.

Here’s a more advanced query that pulls out the 100 worst movies from Netflix’s catalog:

a more advanced query that pulls out the 100 worst movies from Netflix’s catalog

 

We want everyone to be able to experience the productivity and fun of using F# for development.  When F# was released in Visual Studio 2010, we published a free CTP version of the F# compiler and tooling for the free Visual Studio Shell. Long-time F# enthusiasts may recall the days of F# as a Microsoft Research project and downloading the F# compiler from the MSR website.

Now with the launch of Visual Studio 2012, we’re happy to make it even easier to get started using a free version of F#. :)

Learn More

There are myriad resources for getting started with and learning more about F#.  Here’s a sampling:

 

Enjoy!

Comments

  • Anonymous
    September 12, 2012
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 12, 2012
    @Moondevil Thanks for your interest! We don't have plans to release free F# tools for the Desktop Express or Win 8 Express products. We chose to target Visual Studio Express for Web, because it's an excellent fit with F# 3.0’s main focus of information-rich programming. Type providers and query expressions have a natural affinity with server-side and cloud computing, and Express for Web has great tooling (and continuous updates) for these workloads. Let us know what you think of this release!

  • Anonymous
    September 12, 2012
    try to follow the link to install F# but web platform install couldn't find the product... search return nothing for F#

  • Anonymous
    September 23, 2012
    @Moondevil, F# 2.0 ran under the free Visual Studio 2010 Integrated Shell. Perhaps F# 3.0 runs under the 2012 shell?

  • Anonymous
    September 24, 2012
    Thank you, but I have a problem. WebPI is not working via proxy at work for me. Is there an offline installer available?

  • Anonymous
    September 24, 2012
    Nevermind, found it here www.microsoft.com/.../details.aspx

  • Anonymous
    October 14, 2012
    Please add support for the tools in desktop express as well.

  • Anonymous
    December 06, 2012
    I had been thinking that C# had totally taken F# away from us. I prefer F# and am so happy you are doing this. Don't forget F#. Keep improving and evolving it. Thanks

  • Anonymous
    December 16, 2012
    Please add support for the tools in desktop express as well.

  • Anonymous
    January 10, 2013
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 11, 2013
    You know what else would be great? If as part of the "IDE support" you could manage to somehow squeeze in the ability to use folders without having to unload the project and edit the project file by hand...just saying.

  • Anonymous
    April 02, 2013
    "Let us know what you think of this release!" I think you need to release it for the desktop product. Cripes, it's like you people are determined to keep anyone from ever using F#.