F# Hello World

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 \temp\FSharp-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 Files\FSharp-1.1.12.6\bin\;%PATH%

fsc is the command line compiler. You can list the command line options as follows:
```
fsc -help
```
Create a source directory.
```
mkdir \dev\src
```
Create a file \dev\src\hello.fs containing:
```
printf "Hello World!\n"
```
Compile it to give a hello.exe which you can run.
```
cd \dev\src
fsc hello.fs
hello.exe
```