# Prerequisites

WebSharper applications are ASP.NET Core applications, and to develop and build them you pretty much only need a .NET SDK. However, we also recommend you install the WebSharper CLI, your favorite IDE with F# support, and the Azure SDK and CLI:

• .NET 6.0.100 SDK or higher, available from https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download. The SDK contains the dotnet CLI tool that you can use to install WebSharper project templates, compile and run projects, and prepare deployment packages.

  What .NET can I target?

  • WebSharper 7 (upcoming) will target net70.

  • WebSharper 5/6 applications target net50/net60, respectively.

  • If you need to target .NET Framework 4.x (net472, etc.), you must use WebSharper 4.x.

The WebSharper CLI is a dotnet tool that helps streamline building applications and manage compiler runtimes.

You can install it using dotnet:

dotnet tool install -g dotnet-ws

You need an IDE to work with WebSharper projects effectively. We recommend one of the following:

• Visual Studio Community or above, available from https://visualstudio.microsoft.com.

• Visual Studio Code, available from https://code.visualstudio.com. For F# support, you can use:

  • the Ionide plugin, installed through the Extensions tab and searching for "Ionide", or via a direct download from https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Ionide.Ionide-fsharp.

• You can also use Rider, emacs or vi with F# support, or any other IDE of your choice, but you need to make sure they are properly configured for compiling, running and debugging F#/WebSharper projects.

• Azure SDK - to work with the az CLI tool to deploy your WebSharper applications to Azure.