In FSI, resolving DLLs with the #load directive seems to work differently on Mac than on both Windows and Linux

[somelinguist]

I've been working on a project for a while for use with FSI that requires loading several other DLLs as a dependencies. Almost all of the work has been on Windows until today, and I've loaded a helper script to reference the required DLLS.

For example, the helper script is something like:

#I @"../ProjectName/bin/Debug/netstandard2.0" // where all of the project's needed DLLs and their dependencies are located
#r "Newtonsoft.Json"
#r "AnotherDependency"
#r "SomeOtherDependency"
#r "ProjectName"

Then from any script I write, I just do:

#load "helperScript.fsx"
open ProjectName

// do stuff

Then I run the main scripts via dotnet fsi mainScript.fsx or via the FSI button in Ionide.

As I've said, this has worked on Windows for a while. Today, I saw that some of the dependencies were updated work on both Linux and Mac.

On Linux, I was able to get the same setup working with only adding one additional dependency to the helperScript.fsx:

// more dependencies above
#I @"../ProjectName/bin/Debug/netstandard2.0/runtimes/linux-x64"
#r "Mono.Unix"
// more dependencies below

However, when I did the same thing on Mac, I kept getting several dependencies not being found by other dependencies when using the helperScript.fsx. I double checked, and the dependencies are actually in the correct location specified by #I. I also made sure to load the right run-time needed by Mono.Unix on Mac.

However, I just discovered that if I abandon the #load "helperScript.fsx" call and reference all of the dependencies directly in the main script, it works on Mac.

Just the fact moving references to the main file works makes me wonder if the way dependencies get resolved with #load is different on Mac than on Windows and Linux. Again, all of the required DLLs are actually in the location reference with #I.

As there are several dependencies that need to get loaded, it's been very helpful to be able to just use #load "helperScript.fsx" when writing new scripts that make use of the project.

Any ideas? Thanks!

[somelinguist]

I was actually able to resolve the issue using the helper script on Mac by making the project dll target net8.0 instead netstandard2.0.

It's still strange to me, however, that it worked to reference the same dependencies directly in the main script with netstandard2.0 when it failed when putting them in the #load directive.