FSharp Netcore Skeleton

Utility for creating an F# solution/workspace using dotnet core 2.0 with:

• Expecto tests
• Paket for dependency management
• FAKE for builds.

Multi project setup:

• Creates a solution
• Creates a library (classlib) or executable (console).
• If it's a console application then we can enable the FAKE build task RunWatch to watch the file system for changes and build/run tests/executable on each source file change - just do build.cmd RunWatch.
• Automatically runs the first paket install to get the initial dependencies
• Runs git init and adds all the files

Simple setup (--single-project or --no-build):

• No solution
• The single project setup creates a a library (classlib) or executable (console) project, but NO test project.
• The single project setup uses Paket for dependencies and Fake for builds.
• The --no-build option is a single project without Fake builds, but still using Paket.

For anything simpler, for example, no project, no fake and perhaps just paket to fetch some depedencies, you might as well just use paket or the dotnet cli directly along with .fsx interactive file(s).

Usage

• Requires python 3.
• Requires dotnet sdk

# Create solution 'FooProject' in a subfolder of the working directory
python3 fsharp-netcore-skeleton.py FooProject --console --watcher

# Create a solution 'FooProject' in a specific directory
python3 fsharp-netcore-skeleton.py ~/dev/FooProject --console --watcher

# Create a solution 'FooProject' in a specific directory and overwrite files as needed
python3 fsharp-netcore-skeleton.py ~/dev/FooProject --classlib --force

# Create a single project 'FooProject' with no solution and don't initialise git
python3 fsharp-netcore-skeleton.py ~/dev/FooProject --console --single-project --nogit

The options are documented through DocOpt.

Prior to First Generated Build Script Run

The build.fsx file should then be tweaked: project, summary and maybe dotnetcliVersion before running build.cmd.

build.cmd runs the All build targets (everything except RunWatch) doing a full rebuild. The sample Expecto tests have some initially failing examples that need fixing for the build to be green. Note, if wanting to only watch and re-run tests everytime the source changes (and not run an executable), then the VSCode Ionide plugin can do that.

Alternatives

Project Scaffold is currently a better alternative if using the non-crossplatform .net framework. This skeleton is single project + test project only.

Forge may do some or all of the work of this skeleton, but it is currently also not dotnet core.

SAFE-Stack bookstore project is a good example of a combined client/server project similar to this skeleton using the Fable F# to JS compiler for the frontend.