Microsoft Announces The Release Of Visual F# Tools 3.1.2

Microsoft today announced the availability of Visual F# Tools 3.1.2 which includes updates to the Visual F# compiler and F# IDE tooling for Visual Studio. Microsoft is continuing to expand .NET portable library support in Visual F#, with this release you can find F# project templates, along with compiler and runtime support, for two additional portable profiles:

• Profile 78 (.NET Framework 4.5, Windows 8, Windows Phone Silverlight 8)
• Profile 259 (.NET Framework 4.5, Silverlight 5, Windows 8, Windows Phone 8.1)

Some other new features in this release,

Non-locking assembly references in FSI

F# developers love the quick-iteration development workflow enabled by F# Interactive – “edit-compile-test” is more or less distilled to “edit-test” – and tend to dislike anything that slows them down.

Those errors should no longer be an issue. F# Interactive now supports non-locking #r references via shadow copy.

Support for Publish in web and Azure projects

If you are using F# for web development, perhaps utilizing one of the excellent community project templates that are available, you have likely noticed that the Visual Studio “Publish” action has not worked for F# projects in the past.  This long-standing issue has finally been addressed; you can now publish F# web and Azure projects directly from Visual Studio!

Improved *nix compatibility with #! in F# scripts

The F# compiler now allows for the shebang (#!) directive to exist at the beginning of F# source files, and will treat such a line as a comment.  This allows F# scripts to be compatible with the Unix convention whereby a script can indicate to the OS what interpreter to use by providing the path to that interpreter on the first line, following the #! directive.

Visual F# Tools 3.1.2 is a standalone, F#-only installer that packages the latest updates to the F# compiler, interactive, runtime, and Visual Studio integration.  The IDE updates apply to Visual Studio 2013 Pro+, Desktop Express, and Web Express. You can download the installer package here. Read more about it here.