The noble craft of software development

If you retarget an F# 3.0 project to F# 3.1 in Visual Studio 2013, you might end up with a System.MissingMethodException when you rebuild and run your project. This is because you need to manually update the App.config file after you retarget to F# 3.1.

In your App.config, you’ll probably find a runtime tag looking something like this:

<runtime>
  <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
    <dependentAssembly>
      <assemblyIdentity name="FSharp.Core" publicKeyToken="b03f5f7f11d50a3a" culture="neutral" />
      <bindingRedirect oldVersion="2.0.0.0" newVersion="4.3.0.0" />
      <bindingRedirect oldVersion="2.3.5.0" newVersion="4.3.0.0" />
      <bindingRedirect oldVersion="4.0.0.0" newVersion="4.3.0.0" />
    </dependentAssembly>
  </assemblyBinding>
</runtime>

The version numbers are the culprits and you need to change all occurences of newVersion to "4.3.1.0", which is the version number of the F# 3.1 FSharp.Core runtime DLL. You also need to add a redirect from version 4.3.0.0 to 4.3.1.0. The resulting runtime tag should now be:

<runtime>
  <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
    <dependentAssembly>
      <assemblyIdentity name="FSharp.Core" publicKeyToken="b03f5f7f11d50a3a" culture="neutral" />
      <bindingRedirect oldVersion="2.0.0.0" newVersion="4.3.1.0" />
      <bindingRedirect oldVersion="2.3.5.0" newVersion="4.3.1.0" />
      <bindingRedirect oldVersion="4.0.0.0" newVersion="4.3.1.0" />
      <bindingRedirect oldVersion="4.3.0.0" newVersion="4.3.1.0" />
    </dependentAssembly>
  </assemblyBinding>
</runtime>

Rebuild, rerun and enjoy the absence of MissingMethodExceptions. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how we do that!