Type providers not compiling on MonoDevelop

[7sharp9]

Type providers appear to work initially but on compilation non defined member errors are shown.

This effects MonoDevelop 3.05 stable and 3.06 beta. This is with the 3.2.10 binding from the gallery.

Could this be related to compilation order as intellisense works ok. Its as if the compilation phase is not getting the generated output from the type provider.

Its possible that this may be a fault in the fsharpx type providers as the Regex, Maths, and freebase providers seem to compile ok. This could simply be a cross platform issue for fsharpx. If so I can move this issue over there...

[knocte]

Look carefully in the references list: it's not finding FSharp.Core, which may be related to the issue.

[7sharp9]

Dont worry about that, its always shown like that due to an issue with the pkgconfig, thats issue #30

[7sharp9]

To be honest I dont think this is an issue with the binding anymore, Ill leave it here until I get to the bottom of the issue though...

[ghost]

A while back someone helped us make a couple of type providers "cross platform" on Mono/MonoDevelop.

Here are the notes:

First, a type provider on Mono can expose some small differences in Mono and .NET, especially in the System.Type implementation. The ProvidedTypes API can normally be adjusted to account for these.

To help isolate the problem, try the following:

• Start with a simple file that uses the type provider and compile it using "fsc.exe" on Windows. This should succeed.
• Now compile the file on windows using the open source "fsc.exe" (this will run using .NET). This should succeed (if not, there is a bug in the open source compiler)
• Now compile the file on windows using the open source "mono fsc.exe" (this will run using Mono). . If this fails, then there are differences in Mono v. .NET exposed by the type provider. The type provider can probably be adjusted.
• If that succeeded, then try the same command-line compilation on, say, OSX. If this fails then the type provider may not be cross-platform, e.g. may rely on Windows-only functionality. Diagnostics from the type provider may need improving.
• If that succeeded, then check if the type provider works from MonoDevelop. If not then the problem is with the MonoDevelop binding (but that is very unlikely because it doesn't know anything specific about type providers)

In any case, switching to command-line compilations will help localize the problem.

[7sharp9]

Thanks @dsyme

One of the main problems is debugging the issues. I found the main issue was the errors reported didn't reflect the problem. It looked like the problem was with with the compiler not being passed the types, but the real issue was with path differences between osx and windows. Whats Ill do is transfer this issue to the fsharpx repo.

One thing I have noticed is that intellisense seems to be extremely limited around the nested functions in the type providers, Ill see if I can localise this too and raise an issue in the binding.

[7sharp9]

@dsyme Maybe we should extend the advice above and include it in the new documentation we are planning (we being fsharp.org)

[ghost]

Good point. I've copied them into some working notes for a x-plat development guide and will send you a copy of the collected notes I have.