paket dependency manager doesn't work out of the box in VS, but it does if compiles with VS

When I pull the release of FSharp.DependencyManager.Paket.dll from https://github.com/fsprojects/Paket/releases and drop it next to the location it is required under dotnet fsi (under the dotnet sdk folder, next to the nuget extension), it just works.

However, when I attempt to do so, in order for VS to pick it up, dropping under the commonextensions/microsoft/fsharp folder, VS doesn’t pick it up.

Repro steps

• download FSharp.DependencyManager.Paket.dll from https://github.com/fsprojects/Paket/releases
• (§) drop it in your VS installation (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Preview\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\FSharp for example)
• open a script with #r "paket: nuget Foo" in it

Expected behavior

Typechecks

Actual behavior

Complains about the extension “paket” not being present.

Known workarounds

• https://github.com/fsprojects/Paket/
• open https://github.com/fsprojects/Paket/blob/master/src/FSharp.DependencyManager.Paket/FSharp.DependencyManager.Paket.fsproj in VS
• compile to your taste
• ??? (§) (deploy in VS following the above steps, which are a bit voodoo for end users until we do something around #8880)
• profit

FSharp.DependencyManager.Paket.release.zip

Related information

It always behaved this way, it is not something which broke due to a change, but it should be fixed if possible.

I suspect it impacts any other extensions than the one which Microsoft ships, I don’t know why it works out of the box in the dotnet sdk but not in VS.

[dsyme]

We should have a design document (e.g. tooling RFC) that specifies how the DependencyManager things work. It’s hard to tell what the intended design is.

[KevinRansom]

I will take a look when I get a chance.