This is a first post about my experiences with running F# and Mono on a Mac.
In a previous post I wrote about how I have started to play with F#. As that post also covered SQLCLR it was obvious I was on Windows. Even though I make my living from development in a Windows environment, my main machine is a MacBook, and I run OSX as my main OS. I have previously also been running Linux (ArchLinux) on this machine as my main OS. Naturally I have heard about Mono (and also installed it a couple of times - and quickly un-installed again, but I have not really done anything with it. I have always run Windows in a VM on my MacBook for development etc. However after the announcement that F# was going Open Source, and Tomas P posted about his F# MonoDevelop plug-in, I decided that I should have a look at what it would be like to do F# “stuff in OSX.
This is what I did:
- Downloaded Mono
- Downloaded F#. You want to download the zip file.
Having downloaded what I thought was necessary (I decided to hold off with MonoDevelop until I had everything running), I started the installation process. Installing Mono was straight forward, just mount the .dmg and then run the .pkg file. The only slight issue after installation was where it had been installed. Mostly for my own reference for later installations; Mono is located at: /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework.
After I had installed Mono, I copied the bin directory from the unzipped F# file to a directory I created in the same root folder as where Mono was: /Library/Frameworks/FSharp. I copied the install-mono.sh file to the FSharp directory and was ready to start the installation. Fortunately before I executed the install-mono.sh file, I read the comments in the file. At this stage I realised I had not downloaded everything necessary.
One of the F# dll’s FSharp.Core.dll needs to be installed in the gac. In order to do that, the dll needs to be re-signed with the mono.snk key. The installation file mentions how you can download the file using wget. As I did not have wget I found a link to it and downloaded it by right-clicking on the link and choose “Save Link As”. Once again mostly for my future reference; the file can be found here, (just right click and choose “Save Link As”). I saved it into the F# root folder (the same folder where the install-mono.sh is).
So, now everything should be ready to go. I executed the install file and promptly got an error saying that the FSharp.Core.dll could not be installed in the gac. Hmm, not good! Fortunately the error message mentioned something about a possible permission error, so I looked at the permissions on the gac folder (../Mono.framework/Versions/2.8/lib/mono/gac), and sure enough - I did not have write permissions. I gave myself write permissions, and re-ran the installation and everything went OK. Cool!!
After this it was time to test it out. From the F# bin directory I ran the following from a terminal window to execute the compiler: mono fsc.exe. It seemed to work as I got this error back:
I then tried the interactive window: mono fsi.exe. I wrote some simple test code:
As you can see, that worked as well!! So I am now well on the way of running (and learning) F# on Mono. Next step is to install MonoDevelop and Tomas P’s plugin for F#. Stay tuned…
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