hosted/dynamic at-runtime F#?

[Steven Taylor]

Hey,

back-of-the-envelope idea / sketch here.  I'm new to this community, so my apologies if this has been discussed already.

After being delighted by the F# Interactive console I started playing around with FSharp.Compiler.CodeDom.  I was in for a shock. Compilation took a good 2 seconds fpr printfn "Hello World!".  Is this typical?

Open source F# seems to have a weakness, and I wonder if we should think about this more seriously.  Without paying attention to this F# will remain bound to static situations -- and it is such a dynamic expressive language, this would be a pity.  

I wonder if we should take the leadership shown by this python project as something to aim towards and perhaps emulate?

http://doc.pypy.org/en/latest/cli-backend.html

For the pure kernel of the F# ideal, I'm inclined to think that the CLI should be a target, not a home.  Perhaps LLVM as mentioned in a functional londoners video (I forget which). 

best,

-Steven Taylor

P.S. I was looking through my bookshelf of abandoned MS technologies (10+ years worth) and just though that for those who are passionate about this language, that perhaps it is worth going the extra distance.

[Tomas Petricek]

Hi Steven,
The CodeDom provider for F# is probably not the best way to compile code on
the fly - it is there mainly for compatibility reasons (it is used by
various projects that generate code during compilation like ASP.NET). It
calls the fsc.exe compiler under the cover, so the 2 second compilation is
mainly the load time of the compiler.

At the moment, F# does not have a great API for calling it interactively
(like IronPython had), but it is definitely something that the community
could do - and I'm sure this would be really appreciated by many.

The best way to approach the problem would be to use API available in
FSharp.Compiler.dll provided by the SimpleSourceCodeServices type:
https://github.com/fsharp/fsharp/blob/master/src/fsharp/vs/SimpleServices.fs

This allows you to compile code into a dynamic assembly (and then run it),
but it only

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[Tomas Petricek]

Hi Steven,
The CodeDom provider for F# is probably not the best way to compile code on
the fly - it is there mainly for compatibility reasons (it is used by
various projects that generate code during compilation like ASP.NET). It
calls the fsc.exe compiler under the cover, so the 2 second compilation is
mainly the load time of the compiler.

At the moment, F# does not have a great API for calling it interactively
(like IronPython had), but it is definitely something that the community
could do - and I'm sure this would be really appreciated by many.

The best way to approach the problem would be to use API available in
FSharp.Compiler.dll provided by the SimpleSourceCodeServices type:
https://github.com/fsharp/fsharp/blob/master/src/fsharp/vs/SimpleServices.fs

This allows you to compile code into a dynamic assembly (and then run it)

using esentially the same mechanism as the one used by F# Interactive. So,
once the library loads all the necessary DLLs, it should be pretty fast.

Tomas

-----Original Message-----
From: fsharp-o...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:fsharp-o...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Steven Taylor
Sent: Sunday, November 11, 2012 11:03 AM
To: fsharp-o...@googlegroups.com
Subject: hosted/dynamic at-runtime F#?

[Steven Taylor]

The best way to approach the problem would be to use API available in
FSharp.Compiler.dll provided by the SimpleSourceCodeServices type:
https://github.com/fsharp/fsharp/blob/master/src/fsharp/vs/SimpleServices.fs

This allows you to compile code into a dynamic assembly (and then run it)

using esentially the same mechanism as the one used by F# Interactive. So,
once the library loads all the necessary DLLs, it should be pretty fast.

> thanks.  I'll take a look at this.  Maybe it'll be fast enough.

[panesofglass]

Thanks for sharing that, Tomas. I have never seen that type.

Do you happen to know why the F# compiler is a CLI-only tool? Why not build the compiler as a library and expose it through a CLI, CodeDomProvider, or even allow consumption in applications? This is probably a better question for Don. I'm sure there are excellent reasons; I just don't know them. I liked Fahad's fork that pulled the library out for general consumption. I would have thought that could easily be plugged back into the CLI.

In other news, I'm working on a Web API that provides FSI as a service. This would be similar to tryfs.net more than the hosted, Silverlight-based tryfsharp.org.

Cheers,

Ryan

[Tim Robinson]

Hi Ryan, what have you got so far - do you want to work together?

As it happens, I've been looking though the code for the version 3 compiler this week, with a view to putting together a more natural backend than a hosted copy of fsi.exe. At first I'd like to speed up tryfs.net by pre-loading the FSI code, but thanks to Tomas's explanation below, I can imagine having a REST interface to the compiler.

What I have in mind is something like an F# version of IPython, i.e. a web-based notebook that lets you collaborate on F# code.

--

[Steven Taylor]

I'll throw my hat in the ring if you need some help on this.  

-Steven

[Tim Robinson]

Hi Tomas, is there an FSharp.Compiler binary that exposes the SimpleServices types? They're public in the source code at Github, but everything in my VS2012 copy of FSharp.Compiler.dll is internal (to the extent that FSharp.Compiler exports nothing publicly).

Thanks,

Tim

[Tim Robinson]

Ah, I understand now - this post from Don explains it: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/fsharp-opensource/jAsUqh9Ft4M/4rOYrKgCPlUJ

It's only in the Silverlight build at present.

[Ben Winkel]

This api is also in the .NET 4.x FSharp.Compiler.dll you get from the open source release.

It uses a different strong name to the one from Microsoft, so you can use it as copy local (e.g. as part of a hosting plugin for Excel, a game or some other app)

If you want to use it then compiler the open source release on mac/linux - there is a problem compiling on windows right now, see https://github.com/fsharp/fsharp/issues/61

[Dave]

Tomas,

Are there any examples out there on how to make use of this API?

[Ben Winkel]

 

This API is visible if you compile the FSharp.Compiler.dll from the github repo, e.g. look in

 

     lib\release\4.0\FSharp.Compiler.dll

There is a small script using this API in

 

    tests\hosting\hosted.fsx

 

but the stdout is not correctly captured for the interactive case

 

-- ben

On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 8:48 PM, Dave <david...@gmail.com> wrote:

Any particular reason why this module is not visible to anything but silverlight?

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[panesofglass]

I got tied up in other things and completely missed this reply. I can't find the stuff I had. I was planning to start from the Roslyn-based version from Filip Woj. I hadn't made it that far. I also noticed you posted FsNotebook, so you have probably made more progress. And I would absolutely like to collaborate.

Ryan

[panesofglass]

This pull request https://github.com/fsharp/fsharp/pull/15 offered the same outside of Silverlight. However, I think it altered a few other things. It might be a good source for determining how to expose types from FSharp.Compiler.

[panesofglass]

So the OSS version has exposed these types outside Silverlight? Excellent! Do you happen to know the commit(s) that did this?

[Dave]

How does one get intellisense capabilities like the following:

http://www.tryfsharp.org/Create