Razor Language Service does not appear to work with cshtml files in fsproj project

[TheJayMann]

I have noticed for a while now that when attempting to use Giraffe.Razor to make views for a Giraffe web application, the cshtml files themselves have no intellisense or formatting outside of basic html. After playing around a bit with adding ProjectCapability elements directly to the fsproj, I noticed if I add CSharp as a project capability and reopening the project in Visual Studio (as adding this capability tends to crash Visual Studio the moment a cshtml file is open, or immediately if one is already open), the cshtml file now gets basic razor formatting in addition to the html formatting, but no csharp intellisense, and all fs files only get basic fsharp formatting with no intellisense.

I would like to request that somehow Razor Language Service could somehow be made to work for this situation. Having the design time editor treat the files as simply html files with no knowledge of how the razor or csharp bits work makes the use of Razor templates nearly worthless to me.

[mkArtakMSFT]

Thanks for contacting us, @TheJayMann.
In order for us to investigate this issue, please provide a minimalistic repro project that illustrates the problem.

[TheJayMann]

It is fairly simple to reproduced. After creating an ASP.NET Core Web Application in Visual F#, selecting an empty project type, create a new folder at the project level called Views, then add a new item to the folder, selecting Razor View under Visual C#. Once Index.cshtml is added to the Views folder, the file is treated as though it were an html file. If you edit the fsproj and add , Visual Studio will immedately close as soon as Index.cshtml is opened, (or immediately if it is already open).

After opening the project again, Index.cshtml now appears to have some razor support, such as @{}, @**@, @model, @inject, etc, and code blocks have basic csharp support such as string literals and some csharp keywords having colors, and braces/parentheses being automatically completed. Also, at this point, fs files no longer have full support, but only partial supports, such as coloring of keywords and string literals.

Removing the ProjectCapability and reopening the project file brings everything back to what it originally was, where all the fsharp functionality is returned, and cshtml files are treated like html files.

I have attempted this on two separate Visual Studio installations on two separate devices, one which is at 15.8.2, and the other at 15.8.1, and both have given me the same results. If you need me to submit this minimal example as a repository, I can, but, I believe from these instructions it should be unnecessary.

[mkArtakMSFT]

@ToddGrun, @alexgav is this a supported scenario?

[TheJayMann]

Assuming this is not supported, to have Razor Language Service working for cshtml files in an fsproj, which I believe right now is not supported, this issue is a request to, at some point, have this be supported.

[mkArtakMSFT]

Thanks for clarifying, @TheJayMann.
@danroth27 this is something we need your input on.

[danroth27]

@mkArtakMSFT I think it is worth at least investigating to understand what the cost would be to enable this scenario.

[TheJayMann]

I don't know how clear my descriptions were, but, just in case, I will attempt to clarify some of the things I have stated.

My desired outcome is that I can take a vanilla FSharp project targeting Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Web, add a cshtml file to the project, and have the same experience as if I had added the cshtml file to a csproj, even if I am required to continuously rebuild the project for references to properly align (which I already have to do if I have a mixed solution containing both csproj and fsproj projects).

Any comments I made about adding ProjectCapability elements were only mentioning experiments that I have done, just to see what happens. I am not stating that it should be supported to add a CSharp capability to an fsproj, unless that is determined to be the best way to implement this feature.