The project file

Unlike JS, F# projects require all sources to be listed in compilation order in an .fsproj file. This may look quite restrictive at first, but it does have some advantages. Since an F# project takes its roots from the .NET ecosystem, we need to follow a few obligatory steps in order to add a file to an F# project.

• Create an .fsproj file

  .fsproj files are in XML format. This may look a bit old-fashioned, but luckily the basic schema for F# projects has become much simpler in recent versions. Now the skeleton for most projects looks like this:

  <Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
      <PropertyGroup>
          <TargetFramework>netstandard2.0</TargetFramework>
      </PropertyGroup>
      <ItemGroup>
          <!-- List your source files here -->
      </ItemGroup>
      <ItemGroup>
          <!-- List your package references here if you don't use Paket -->
      </ItemGroup>
  </Project>

• Add an .fs file to the project

  F# source files end with the .fs extension. To include a new one in the project, you only need to add it to the .fsproj using a relative path with the following tag:

  <ItemGroup>
      <Compile Include="path/to/my/File.fs" />
  <ItemGroup>

  For example, if we have have an app with two files, named MyAwesomeFeature.fs and App.fs (the last one contains the entry point), it will look like this

  <ItemGroup>
      <Compile Include="MyAwesomeFeature.fs" />
      <Compile Include="App.fs" />
  <ItemGroup>

  Please be aware that in F#, file order is important. For instance, if App.fs calls MyAwesomeFeature.fs, then you must place MyAwesomeFeature.fs above App.fs.

  Let's add another file, Authentication.fs, located in another folder Shared which is at the same depth as our src folder (this can happen, for example, if the file is shared with another project, like a server). Let's see the current state of our project tree:

  myproject
      |_ src
          |_ MyAwesomeFeature.fs
          |_ App.fs
          |_ App.fsproj
      |_ Shared
          |_ Authentication.fs

  This can be expressed in the project file as:

  <ItemGroup>
      <Compile Include="../Shared/Authentication.fs" />
      <Compile Include="MyAwesomeFeature.fs" />
      <Compile Include="App.fs" />
  <ItemGroup>