The COM Type Provider provides a new way to do COM interop from F#.
For more details see the documentation.
Normally, to do COM interop from a .NET project, you use the Add Reference function of Visual Studio and select the COM component you would like to reference. This generates an assembly containing the interop types that you can then consume from your code.
Behind the scenes, Add Reference actually depends on the TypeLibConverter
class to create the interop types (this is also used by the tlbimp.exe tool).
This allows us to leverage the same TypeLibConverter class from the type
provider to do the heavy work of generating the interop types.
The following known issues and limitations currently apply to the COM provider. Some of them I would like to eventually rectify if possible:
- Only 32-bit target executables and COM libraries are supported.
- Type libraries with Primary Interop Assemblies (PIAs) such as Microsoft Office are not supported.
- All the types generated from the type library are embedded, rather than just the ones you refer to in your code.
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