Back to Questions
1.9k
views2
comments
Visual Studio 2010 F# integration...
f#lisp

Hello all,

I apologize if this is the wrong forum to ask the following questions; it seemed the best choice to me.

I've been using F# with Visual Studio 2008. As much as I like F#, the integration with VS2008 was not great. In particular, I noticed the following problems:

1) No way to easily navigate between functions in a source/script file. What I'm talking about here is something analogous to the "method navigator" that is available for a C# class (available in the top right of the code editor window).

2) Flaky "Go To Definition" implementation. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I've yet to figure out why.

3) No debugging support when running a function interactively. That is, I'd like to set a breakpoint on a function, evaluate the function in the REPL, then have the debugger start up when the function is executed in the REPL. BTW, in doing some brief reading on the subject, I realize this might be difficult to do, but I want to mention it as a "nice to have" that I would find quite useful (I grew up with lisp REPLs :)).

On Friday, I installed Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2. I was hoping to see points (1) and (3) addressed -- I haven't played with VS2010 long enough to know if (2) is still a problem -- but it seems like nothing has changed since VS2008 with regard to those two issues. Does anyone know if this is true?

Once again, I apologize if this is the wrong place to be asking these questions.

Thanks.

--

G

.

re #2. In VS 2010-Beta 2, and VS-2008, F# 1.9.7.8, I've found that "go to definition" *never* works for .Net API calls and F# definitions. It seems to be OK for navigation within my program (but I don't use that feature much, so I'm not sure). I recall a time when it did work reasonably well. The mouseover definitions are working though.

By on 12/6/2009 8:46 PM ()

Thanks for the feedback.

#1 is something we'll definitely be looking at for a future release.

Let us know if you have any more detail about #2, sounds like it could be a bug.

There are some challenges with #3, but I think you can at least attach the debugger to the fsi.exe server process and use breakpoints. The experience is still not ideal, but possible; you might also consider using two instances of VS (one attached as a debugger, the other for editing and using the interactive window).

For the most part, the same F# product code is used for the VS2008 package and the VS2010 product, so the features will be the same. The advantages of using F# in VS2010 are that it's a supported product and it is integrated with all the other useful new features of 2010 (CLR/.Net 4.0 integration, multi-targeting, historical debugger, ...).

By on 12/6/2009 12:30 PM ()

    Topic tags

    IntelliFactory Offices Copyright (c) 2011-2012 IntelliFactory. All rights reserved.
    Home | Products | Consulting | Trainings | Blogs | Jobs | Contact Us | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Cookie Policy     		Built with WebSharper