Ionide says the C# extension is optional, but requires it anyway

[ghost]

I for one never use the debugging support provided, and it's a non-trivial (~150 MiB) amount of stuff to download. The extension should just provide FSAC and other F# features.

The C# extension downloads a bunch of potentially unnecessary support as well, like ASP.NET Core and Razor support which I also never use. To make things worse, ionide doesn't even start working until everything is installed. So I have to wait for C# features I'll never use to be installed before I can get to editing. Overall, this makes the F# extension feel needlessly bloated.

I am fully in favor of incremental complexity. Start with a base F# extension, and let the user add features they need (Debugging, C# support, etc) as needed. The extension should make this adding of features easy, or maybe an extension pack can provide this extension grouping for people that want all of the things right away.

[mohaalak]

i think you are absolutely right.

[dlidstrom]

I rarely use debugging either, but I find it invaluable the times I do.

[ghost]

I rarely use debugging either, but I find it invaluable the times I do.

Which is why the recommendation I made is:

Start with a base F# extension, and let the user add features they need (Debugging, C# support, etc) as needed. The extension should make this adding of features easy, or maybe an extension pack can provide this extension grouping for people that want all of the things right away.

[cartermp]

Note that C# support and Debugging are one and the same right now. There is no way to get a debugger without also getting the C# extension.

[baronfel]

sorta. For the OpenVSIX build of ionide we bundle Samsung's debugger, which implements the CoreCLR debugging spec as well.

[lukemcdo]

I'd be interested in seeing the Fable REPL adapted to provide an F# extension for VSCode. Perhaps an Ionide-Fable extension? The upside for this approach is an Ionide-Fable extension would be a good fit for running in the new browser-only VSCode modes, as well as faster/easier install in places like GitPod/Code Spaces.

Point is, that might need to be a separate plugin from this plugin.

[lukemcdo]

No, it would have a subset of features.

Technically, yes that's true. Empty completion lists, no cross-project support of any kind, no ability to detect .NET dependencies (e.g., no understanding of what Console is), the list goes on. You might get some basic syntax coloring, but not semantic coloring.

I don't know what you're trying to argue here, frankly. It's an interesting proposition but it's a very expensive one.

I understand your skepticism but the semantic coloring and completion list features are already present at the Fable repl demo site. Obviously both are limited in scope compared to the VSCode completions since the project-related features and .NET dependencies aren't present. I'm sure though that more is possible.

While I can understand how what I'm suggesting might not appear worth its tradeoffs, I feel like I'm seeing a lot of people looking for their tooling to appear on the fancy new vscode.dev site. I'm also seeing more and more projects using either GitPod or GitHub Codespaces. The VSCode site will likely never support Ionide-VSCode-FSharp as-is. GitPod supports it, but it's ugly to set up. I haven't tried setting it up on Codespaces, but I doubt the simplicity would match a one-click install of a proposed Ionide-VSCode-Fable.

I can understand if you don't prioritize these environments, but I think they'll be important in the coming years.

@Krzysztof-Cieslak I'm happily listening to feedback. I've got the message that this would be damn hard, and I've been asking further questions as to how it would be hard and why, and where I should investigate and try to learn. Am I supposed to act completely overwhelmed by this information that a hard problem is hard?

[cartermp]

I understand your skepticism but the semantic coloring and completion list features are already present at the Fable repl demo site. Obviously both are limited in scope compared to the VSCode completions since the project-related features and .NET dependencies aren't present. I'm sure though that more is possible.

Yes, that's sort of my point. What the fable REPL relies on is roughly just being a standalone F# script file. This is awesome for learning F#, but nowhere near enough to support things like:

• Scripts that interact with your development environment (e.g., file system access)
• Full-on fable projects, since these require a project file and .NET to build
• .NET projects, which the majority of F# developers use today
• Solutions with multiple projects, including mixed C# and F# (which is also fairly common)

If you're in this environment, what powers the Fable REPL won't give you much of anything. You need components like what the .NET SDK give you to generate the data needed to make the plugin have value in any of these scenarios. Replacing this with Fable means you'd need to re-create all of that, which is extremely challenging and error-prone work. There's a reason why there's entire software engineering teams at Microsoft who build this stuff that we sit on top of.

I'm also seeing more and more projects using either GitPod or GitHub Codespaces. The VSCode site will likely never support Ionide-VSCode-FSharp as-is.

Gitpod supports .NET today (IIRC they're having a kernel bug right now but that's just a bug). It's just a container image with the SDK on it. I've used it for a year now and Ionide works great with it.

The vscode site is an interesting one to consider, since it has restricted capabilities. Likely just supporting F# scripts via Fable is possible. If there were a way to let plugins know which host is loading them then that may be possible.

[baronfel]

IIRC they're having a kernel bug right now but that's just a bug

Oh thank goodness, I thought it was something I'd done that was wrong on my testing gitpod workspaces.

[lukemcdo]

I understand your skepticism but the semantic coloring and completion list features are already present at the Fable repl demo site. Obviously both are limited in scope compared to the VSCode completions since the project-related features and .NET dependencies aren't present. I'm sure though that more is possible.

Yes, that's sort of my point. What the fable REPL relies on is roughly just being a standalone F# script file. This is awesome for learning F#, but nowhere near enough to support things like: ...

I understood that just fine from prior messages from @/baronfel. I've been brainstorming possibilities such as grabbing project parsing from Mono and seeing if that will run in a WASM environment as an interim solution.

[cartermp]

It's more than just parsing projects though. You'll need to actually know which assemblies to load so that the F# compiler service knows which types to bind to so that it can offer accurate typechecking. Failing that, this capability (distribution?) of the extension won't support F# targeting .NET. We're talking something on the order of years to make it robust enough to support what people expect.