Visual F# Tools 3.1.1 has been released with support for both desktop and web versions of Visual Studio Express 2013 Express. It also provides support for installation in a system which doesn't have Visual Studio. In such a case, the compiler, runtime and F# interactive will be automatically deployed without IDE tooling.
According to Microsoft F# product team, the above feature has been implemented to enable you to use F# 3.1 in build server and virtual machine scenarios. Moreover, developers can also make use of the latest release while editing clients such as Emacs and Xamarin Studio.
The installation of F# tools 3.1 can be automated using the following command direcly from a PowerShell session
$webclient = New-Object Net.WebClient
$url = 'http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/0/A/30A5D6DD-5B5C-4E06-B331-A88AA0B53150/FSharp_Bundle.exe'
$webclient.DownloadFile($url, "$pwd\FSharp_Bundle.exe")
.\FSharp_Bundle.exe /install /quiet
Microsoft is slated to include F# tools along with the upcoming releases of Visual Studio. In order to install Visual F# Tools 3.1.1, you require either Windows 7 or 8 in addition to Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate, Premium, Professional, Desktop and Web Express. If you install the tools without Visual Studio then you need to install additional frameworks such as MSBuild 12.0, .NET Framework 4.5.1 and the Windows 7 and 8.1 SDKs.
After the completion of installation, you can locate the required DLL and EXE files of the tools package from Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\F#\3.1\Framework\v4.0 folder.
The official download page doesn't mention any reference to Visual Studio 2012 as one of the requirement for the installation of F# tools 3.1. It remains to be see as to whether the tools provide support for Visual Studio 2012.
