Hi Stephan,

I've attempted to statically link C# assemblies into F# and found the process harrowing. It seems that --static-link fails when there is more than a single unmanaged resource in the dependent assemblies. I did get a combination of ILMerge and --standalone to create a standalone executable linking to a C# assembly.

Unfortunately general use of ILMerge with F# causes a strange namespace to be created with duplicate names defined A, B, C, D, E etc. This causes the resultant assembly not to load. I reported this to the author of ILMerge a while back and ask you to do the same if you run into the this problem.

ILMerge is actually very easy to use programmatically. With the new post-build step you could include this as a project and run it to merge your assemblies after they have been built. Here's an example bit of code.

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module Tools.AssemblyMerge.Main


#light


#R "../lib/ILMerge.exe"


open System
open ILMerging


let proc = new FileInfo(Process.GetCurrentProcess().MainModule.FileName)
Environment.CurrentDirectory  <- proc.DirectoryName


let outputFile =  "../Tools.AssemblyMerge/XmlDiffPatchMerge.dll"
let inputAssemblies = [|"../lib/XmlDiffPatch.dll";  "../lib/XmlDiffPatch.View.dll" |] 


let mergeAssemblies () =
    let il = new ILMerge(TargetKind= ILMerge.Kind.Dll, OutputFile=outputFile)
    il.SetInputAssemblies inputAssemblies 
    try il.Merge(); write "<Message Content='Merge complete.'/>" 
    with e -> failwithf "<Error Content='Merge failed with %s'/>" e.Message


do mergeAssemblies ()

I do hope static linking and --standalone continues to improve toward v2.0.

regards,
Danny

btw - Great work with FParsec!! Looking forward to the next release...