Early this morning Microsoft made available a package of compiler and library source code for F#. F# is a functional programming language that runs on the .NET framework. While it is not as mature as C# or VB, the languages more often used to build for .NET, it has progressed quickly and is extremely popular in development environments where functional paradigms have been traditional, for example banking and finance.

The release has been made available through the F# Power Pack, an open-source CodePlex project that previously solely hosted a set of additional libraries for F#. These additional libraries provide features such as LINQ library support; an HTML documentation generator; lexer and parser helpers; and other features for migrating between F# versions. The additions to the project are the code from the F# compiler (for the latest version of F#, 2.0) and the code for the core libraries. Binaries for these are not included, but are still freely available from the official F# website. The main F# release cycle coincides with Visual Studio versions, and Don Syme of the F# team says that new releases of the code will be made available to coincide with future service packs and versions of Visual Studio.

The code itself is on the F# CodePlex project, or you can download binaries from the F# site; more on the release on the F# blog.