Build the self-contained F# frontend

The native morphir executable has no built-in F# frontend. It starts the F# frontend as a separate process. The frontend has a self-contained delivery: a folder with the frontend, the F# compiler service and its own .NET runtime. With it, compiling F# needs no .NET SDK, no .NET runtime and no dotnet command on the machine.

Releases do not publish this folder yet. Build it from a checkout, on a machine with the .NET SDK, for the runtime identifier of the target machine:

dotnet publish src/Morphir.Frontend.FSharp.Extension -c Release -r win-arm64 -p:PublishProfile=SelfContainedProcess -p:MorphirRidSpecificPublish=true -o morphir-fsharp-frontend

MorphirRidSpecificPublish=true writes the publish’s lock files under obj/, so the committed packages.lock.json files do not change. The build target PublishFSharpFrontendProcess --rid <rid> publishes the same folder, a zip (Windows) or .tar.gz archive of it with the files at the archive root, and the publish’s lock file beside the archive. Copy the folder to the target machine and name its executable with --extension:

morphir compile --language fsharp --input src/Rates.fs --package-name acme/car-rental --extension "C:\Tools\morphir-fsharp-frontend\morphir-fsharp-frontend.exe"

What this supports: compiling supported F# source files (--input) of one package to Morphir IR. The compiler references are only the .NET framework, FSharp.Core and Morphir.FSharp.Annotations; there is no NuGet restore and no reference to another package or assembly. It is not a build of an arbitrary .fsproj, and it does not compile the generated code: building an application from generated F# or C# still needs the .NET SDK.

Checked on Windows 11 ARM64 (win-arm64), on a machine with .NET installed but hidden from the frontend: the folder runs from a path with a space, with no dotnet on PATH, no DOTNET_* variables, no global install and an empty NuGet packages folder. It loads the .NET runtime from its own folder, and at the same runtime version it gives the same IR and diagnostics as the framework-dependent Morphir.Frontend.FSharp.Extension tool. It was not run on a machine with no .NET at all. The other platforms are not qualified yet; see Installation.