Most of us may rarely using F# for our daily work. And since F# released, now it’s open source under Apach license. And some of you guys may want to have try, but do not want to try the amazing technology only under command line. Is there any express editon for F#? The anwser is not, not like C#/VB/C++, no express editon for F#. But luckily, microsoft provide a Visual Studio 2010 Shell for supporting a viausl IDE for the developer as a free edition.
Below is how to enable F# template in VS Shell.
1. First, download Visual Studio 2010 Shell.
2. Second, download F# CTP 2.0.0.0.
3. Third, launch VS Shell.
Now, you are happy to use F#.
But, there is another issue that most people may always encountered. That is, they installed both, but still can’t see the F# template. Don’t worry about that, that’s a known issue.
And what you need to do, just follow my below steps,
1. Close VS 2010 Shell.
2. Uninstall F# CTP 2.0.0.0.
3. Reinstall F# CTP 2.0.0.0.
4. Launch VS 2010 Shell, to see if F# template is enabled.
Above is the workaround, and the reason is that you installed F# Compiler first, and install VS 2010 Shell secondly. So you need to reverse the install steps. Also, unfortunatly, I not quite sure about the root cause, may be when installing F#, it automaticlly examine if there is a VS Shell, and then regist itself to it. But when installing F# first, it didn’t detect any VS.