Nerd Food: Adventures in F# Land - Part 2

And so the adventures in F# continue. After some digging, I found out that the "sources" for F# are actually available on mercurial in CodePlex, as part of fsxplat. To obtain them, just clone as one would with git:

$ hg clone https://hg01.codeplex.com/fsxplat fsxplat

I say "sources" because there wasn't a lot of source code; its mainly the skeleton of a debian package, that uses a shell script to go away and download the F# binaries. The work is all done inside of make_package.sh and the binaries are available from Microsoft's download website; I even found an updated version here but decided against using it, in case the changes caused further problems.

To my great joy, perusing the zip file revealed a 4.0 build of the F# compiler. I made some surgical modifications to make package, as follows:

$ hg diff

diff -r 4d371abd932f make_package.sh

--- a/make_package.sh Sun Jan 01 22:39:08 2012 +0100

+++ b/make_package.sh Sat Feb 04 17:30:29 2012 +0000

@@ -7,13 +7,20 @@

mv FSharp-2.0.0.0/* fsharp

rmdir FSharp-2.0.0.0

rm fsharp.zip

+rm -rf fsharp/bin

+mv fsharp/v4.0/bin fsharp/bin

+mv fsharp/bin/Fsc.exe fsharp/bin/fsc.exe

+mv fsharp/bin/Fsi.exe fsharp/bin/fsi.exe

cd fsharp

# get Mono key and re-sign the F# dll

# this trick will be removed once the following bug is closed:

# https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=615445

-wget http://anonsvn.mono-project.com/source/trunk/mcs/class/mono.snk

+wget https://github.com/mono/mono/blob/master/mcs/class/mono.snk?raw=true -O mono.snk

sn -q -R bin/FSharp.Core.dll mono.snk

+sn -q -R bin/FSharp.Compiler.Interactive.Settings.dll mono.snk

+sn -q -R bin/FSharp.Compiler.Server.Shared.dll mono.snk

+sn -q -R bin/FSharp.Compiler.dll mono.snk

rm mono.snk

# make the package

Nothing particularly exciting: we delete the existing bin directory and replace it with the one provided in 4.0; we also update the path to mono's SNK file, as the svn server appears to be down; finally, we sign a few more DLLs while we're at it. With these changes one can create a new debian package:

$ ./make_package.sh

We leave the script to perform its magic and eventually one ends up with a lovely deb: fsharp_2.0-1_all.deb. If, like me, you're more comfortable with the command line, you can easily install the package from there:

$ su

# gdebi fsharp_2.0-1_all.deb

Amazingly, it all installs without any problems! So now that we have a 4.0 build of F# we can return to the F# bindings. Unfortunately, we're not quite there yet:

$ make

mkdir -p bin

gmcs -debug+ -out:bin/FSharpBinding.Gui.dll -target:library -r:/usr/lib/mono/4.0/Mono.Posix.dll -r:/usr/lib/mono/4.0/mscorlib.dll -r:System.dll -r:System.Xml.dll -r:/usr/lib/monodevelop/bin/MonoDevelop.Core.dll -r:/usr/lib/monodevelop/bin/MonoDevelop.Ide.dll -r:/usr/lib/monodevelop/bin/Mono.TextEditor.dll -r:/usr/lib/fsharp/FSharp.Core.dll -r:/usr/lib/fsharp/FSharp.Compiler.dll -r:/usr/lib/fsharp/FSharp.Compiler.Interactive.Settings.dll -r:/usr/lib/fsharp/FSharp.Compiler.Server.Shared.dll -r:/usr/lib/cli/atk-sharp-2.0/atk-sharp.dll -r:/usr/lib/cli/pango-sharp-2.0/pango-sharp.dll -r:/usr/lib/cli/gtk-sharp-2.0/gtk-sharp.dll -r:/usr/lib/cli/gdk-sharp-2.0/gdk-sharp.dll -r:/usr/lib/cli/glib-sharp-2.0/glib-sharp.dll src/Gui/FSharpBuildOrderWidget.cs src/Gui/FSharpSettingsWidget.cs src/Gui/FSharpCompilerOptionsWidget.cs src/Gui/gtk-gui/FSharp.MonoDevelop.Gui.FSharpBuildOrderWidget.cs src/Gui/gtk-gui/FSharp.MonoDevelop.Gui.FSharpSettingsWidget.cs src/Gui/gtk-gui/FSharp.MonoDevelop.Gui.FSharpCompilerOptionsWidget.cs src/Gui/gtk-gui/generated.cs

Missing method .ctor in assembly /usr/lib/fsharp/FSharp.Core.dll, type System.Security.SecurityRulesAttribute

Can't find custom attr constructor image: /usr/lib/fsharp/FSharp.Core.dll mtoken: 0x0a000006

fsharpc --noframework --debug --optimize- --target:library -r:bin/FSharpBinding.Gui.dll --out:bin/FSharpBinding.dll -r:/usr/lib/mono/4.0/Mono.Posix.dll -r:/usr/lib/mono/4.0/mscorlib.dll -r:System.dll -r:System.Xml.dll -r:/usr/lib/monodevelop/bin/MonoDevelop.Core.dll -r:/usr/lib/monodevelop/bin/MonoDevelop.Ide.dll -r:/usr/lib/monodevelop/bin/Mono.TextEditor.dll -r:/usr/lib/fsharp/FSharp.Core.dll -r:/usr/lib/fsharp/FSharp.Compiler.dll -r:/usr/lib/fsharp/FSharp.Compiler.Interactive.Settings.dll -r:/usr/lib/fsharp/FSharp.Compiler.Server.Shared.dll -r:/usr/lib/cli/atk-sharp-2.0/atk-sharp.dll -r:/usr/lib/cli/pango-sharp-2.0/pango-sharp.dll -r:/usr/lib/cli/gtk-sharp-2.0/gtk-sharp.dll -r:/usr/lib/cli/gdk-sharp-2.0/gdk-sharp.dll -r:/usr/lib/cli/glib-sharp-2.0/glib-sharp.dll --resource:src/Resources/FSharpBinding.addin.xml --resource:src/Resources/EmptyFSharpSource.xft.xml --resource:src/Resources/EmptyFSharpScript.xft.xml --resource:src/Resources/FSharpConsoleProject.xpt.xml --resource:src/Resources/fsharp-icon-32.png --resource:src/Resources/fsharp-script-32.png --resource:src/Resources/fsharp-file-icon.png --resource:src/Resources/fsharp-project-icon.png --resource:src/Resources/fsharp-script-icon.png --resource:src/Resources/FSharpSyntaxMode.xml src/PowerPack/CodeDomVisitor.fs src/PowerPack/CodeDomGenerator.fs src/PowerPack/CodeProvider.fs src/PowerPack/LazyList.fsi src/PowerPack/LazyList.fs src/Services/Mailbox.fs src/Services/Parameters.fs src/Services/FSharpCompiler.fs src/Services/CompilerLocationUtils.fs src/Services/Common.fs src/Services/Parser.fs src/Services/LanguageService.fs src/Services/CompilerService.fs src/Services/InteractiveSession.fs src/FSharpInteractivePad.fs src/FSharpOptionsPanels.fs src/FSharpSyntaxMode.fs src/FSharpResourceIdBuilder.fs src/FSharpLanguageBinding.fs src/FSharpParser.fs src/FSharpTextEditorCompletion.fs src/FSharpResolverProvider.fs

Microsoft (R) F# 2.0 Compiler build 4.0.30319.1

Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

error FS0243: Unrecognized option: '--resident'

make: *** [all] Error 1

So now we got two problems. The first one seems to be a dependency issue with F#'s core. The second one is even more worrying as it appears we are trying to use an invalid compiler option. Greping for resident on the AddIn sources didn't reveal who's attempting to use --resident, however.

Stay tuned for the next episode...