The following is a hello world WinForms example:

    open System
    open System.Windows.Forms

    let form = new Form()
    do form.Width  
              
If you save the above as
              
    devsrchelloforms.fs
              
then assuming fsc is in your path, you can compile and run it as follows:
              
    cd devsrc
    fsc devsrchelloforms.fs
    helloforms.exe
            

The following steps guide you to compiling your first program, with F# version 1.1.12.6 with .NET 2.0.

• From Add/Remove programs, uninstall any previous F# installs.
• Download F# and save the zip file locally.
• Extract the files to a temporary location:

  cd tempFSharp-1.1.12.6

• Run the .msi installer from that directory. This requires .NET 2.0.

  InstallFSharp.msi

  Note, if you have Visual Studio, the installer will run devenv /setup which takes some moments.

• Add the F# bin directory to your path:

  set PATH=c:Program FilesFSharp-1.1.12.6bin;%PATH%

• fsc is the command line compiler. You can list the command line options as follows:

  fsc -help

• Create a source directory.

  mkdir devsrc

• Create a file \dev\src\hello.fs containing:

  printf "Hello World!n"

• Compile it to give a hello.exe which you can run.

  cd devsrc
  fsc hello.fs
  hello.exe