reloading type providers

Question

I am using the MiniCSVTypeProvider provided in the fsharp powerpack samples.

Unfortunately, it thinks the values provided are float, while mine are of various (varying) formats. I therefore rewrote the MiniCsvType provider to always provide strings instead, leaving the parsing work to the caller.

But for some odd reason, after dereferencing the old DLL and including a reference to the new DLL, it kept providing float, using the old type provider. I had to change the names of assembly and classes to have VS refresh it.

Is there any other ways to revoke/reset a former type provider so that VS takes the change into account?

Answer 1

In general, when developing a type provider, you'll need to shut down the instance of VS that's consuming a type provider in order to update the provider. A common workflow is to have two VS instances: one that's working on the code of the type provider itself, which stays open, and another that's referencing/consuming/testing the provider, which you close each time you're going to make a change. The consumer VS often locks the DLL on disk, and also cannot unload/reload the assembly into its process, which is why you need to end the VS process to iterate on your type provider implementation.

Answer 2

A bit late, but encountering the same problem, I solved it by deactivating and reactivating the type provider from Tools -> Options -> F# Tools -> Type providers. (I am using VS2013)