Use F# on Windows | The F# Software Foundation

Option 1: Install the CLI tools and use your own editor

logo Install the .NET Core SDK. Once that is installed, you can begin using F#!

Create a file called hello.fsx that looks like this:

printfn "Hello World from F#"

Now compile and run this F# script with the following command:

dotnet fsi hello.fsx

If this is your first time using .NET Core, there will be a short, one-time message about using the .NET SDK. After that, you’ll see the following output in your console:

Hello World from F#

To create a project use

dotnet new console --language F#
dotnet run

You will see a message saying “Hello World from F#”.

For more information see Getting started with the F# command line tools.

Option 2: Install Visual Studio Code and Ionide

logo Visual Studio Code is a free, open source, cross platform source code editor supporting a lot of languages. F# is supported by the Ionide project.

Install .NET Core SDK like in step 1.
Install Visual Studio Code for Windows.
Press Ctrl+Shift+P and enter the following to install the Ionide package for VS Code.
```
 ext install Ionide-fsharp
```

You can also install the plugin from the plugin pane on the left-hand side.

Ionide works best if you use the .NET CLI to create your projects. You can learn more in Get Started with F# in Visual Studio Code.

Option 3: Install Visual Studio

logo On Windows, F# programmers commonly use the Visual Studio tools for F#.

Visual Studio 2019 comes with F# support in all its editions: Community, Professional and Enterprise. Community is completely free. See Get started with F# in Visual Studio for more information.
If you already have an older version of Visual Studio, F# is also supported. But the quality of the tooling support and number of features is not as high as in Visual Studio 2019.

Option 4: Install JetBrains Rider

logo JetBrains Rider is a cross-platform .NET IDE built using IntelliJ and ReSharper technology. It offers support for .NET and .NET Core applications on all platforms.

Install JetBrains Rider for Windows.
Install the latest .NET Core SDK.

You will also need either to install Visual Studio or to follow the steps here if you need to use the older .NET Framework instead of .NET Core.

Option 5: Build F# from source

You can build and contribute to the F# compiler and library from the source.