Add gRPC Support

[conradwt]

I propose we ... (describe your suggestion here)

the addition of gRPC support to the F# programming language, aiming to enhance its capabilities for building modern and efficient distributed systems. gRPC is a high-performance, open-source remote procedure call (RPC) framework developed by Google, which enables efficient communication between services across different languages and platforms. Integrating gRPC with F# will empower developers to create reliable, interoperable, and scalable applications that take advantage of F#'s functional programming paradigm and gRPC's efficient communication mechanisms. Thus, the implementation would include the following

The existing way of approaching this problem in F# is ...

1. Using gRPC Libraries Directly
2. Interop with C# or Other Languages
3. Use Language-Neutral Protobufs
4. Third-Party F# Bindings

Pros and Cons

The advantages of making this adjustment to F# are ...

1. Efficiency: gRPC uses HTTP/2 as its transport protocol, offering multiplexing, header compression, and other optimizations that lead to reduced latency and improved network utilization. This efficiency aligns well with F#'s focus on writing concise, performant code.

2. Language Interoperability: gRPC supports multiple programming languages, enabling seamless communication between F# services and those written in other languages such as C++, Java, Python, and more. This is particularly valuable in heterogeneous environments.

3. Strong Typing: F# emphasizes strong typing, immutability, and functional programming constructs. By integrating gRPC, F# developers can benefit from strongly typed contracts, ensuring that remote procedure calls adhere to expected types and structures.

4. Asynchronous Programming: F# is known for its robust support of asynchronous programming using the async workflow. gRPC provides asynchronous communication capabilities, allowing F# developers to harness the full power of asynchronous workflows when designing distributed systems.

5. Code Generation: gRPC generates client and server code from protocol buffer definitions, reducing boilerplate code and ensuring consistency between client and server implementations. This aligns with F#'s emphasis on reducing redundancy and maintaining clean codebases.

6. F# would have synergy with C# for creating gRPC services within VS Studio and from the dotnet CLI (i.e. dotnet new grpc -lang "F#" -o ToDoGrpc)

The disadvantages of making this adjustment to F# are ...

While adding gRPC support to F# can bring numerous benefits, there are also potential disadvantages and challenges to consider. Here are some of the disadvantages:

1. Integration Complexity: Integrating gRPC support into F# may require a significant amount of development effort and expertise. This could involve creating protocol buffer compiler plugins, F#-specific bindings, and ensuring seamless interoperability between gRPC and F#'s functional programming paradigm.

2. Maintenance Overhead: Introducing a new feature like gRPC support requires ongoing maintenance. Any updates to gRPC or changes in the F# language may require adjustments to the integration, potentially leading to additional maintenance overhead.

3. Learning Curve: Developers who are new to gRPC might face a learning curve in understanding its concepts, usage, and intricacies. This can slow down development initially and require additional training or resources.

4. Community Adoption: The adoption of a new feature depends on the F# community's interest and willingness to embrace it. If the community doesn't show significant demand for gRPC support, the effort invested in integration might not yield the expected returns.

5. Performance Considerations: While gRPC is designed for high-performance communication, there could be performance implications specific to the F# integration. Ensuring that the F# integration maintains the performance benefits of gRPC can be a challenge.

6. Compatibility and Stability: F# is part of the larger .NET ecosystem, which evolves over time. Ensuring compatibility and stability with the broader ecosystem, including different .NET runtime versions and frameworks, can be a complex task.

7. Maintaining Idiomatic F# Code: Integrating gRPC with F# while maintaining the idiomatic coding style of F# might require careful design and adherence to F#'s functional programming principles. Striking the right balance between gRPC's constructs and F#'s style could be challenging.

8. Limited Third-Party Support: Compared to more popular programming languages, F# might have fewer third-party libraries, tools, and resources available. This could impact the availability of pre-built solutions, documentation, and community support for gRPC integration.

9. Documentation and Training: Developing comprehensive documentation and training resources for the integrated gRPC support in F# is crucial for its successful adoption. This requires additional effort to create high-quality materials that cater to F# developers' needs.

10. Resource Allocation: Adding gRPC support to F# would require allocating development resources, which could potentially divert attention from other important language improvements or features.

Before proceeding with adding gRPC support to F#, it's important to thoroughly assess these disadvantages against the potential benefits. Careful planning, community engagement, and clear communication can help mitigate these challenges and increase the likelihood of a successful integration.

Extra information

Estimated cost (XS, S, M, L, XL, XXL):

I would estimate S or M because much of the support gRPC is being or has been migrated to gRPC for .NET.

Related suggestions: (put links to related suggestions here)

Affidavit (please submit!)

Please tick these items by placing a cross in the box:

• [X] This is not a question (e.g. like one you might ask on StackOverflow) and I have searched StackOverflow for discussions of this issue
• [X] This is a language change and not purely a tooling change (e.g. compiler bug, editor support, warning/error messages, new warning, non-breaking optimisation) belonging to the compiler and tooling repository
• [X] This is not something which has obviously "already been decided" in previous versions of F#. If you're questioning a fundamental design decision that has obviously already been taken (e.g. "Make F# untyped") then please don't submit it
• [X] I have searched both open and closed suggestions on this site and believe this is not a duplicate

Please tick all that apply:

• [X] This is not a breaking change to the F# language design
• [X] I or my company would be willing to help implement and/or test this

For Readers

If you would like to see this issue implemented, please click the :+1: emoji on this issue. These counts are used to generally order the suggestions by engagement.

[Happypig375]

Wait what

Why is this a language suggestion and not a library suggestion

This should be part of .NET base class library, nothing about F# the programming language

[conradwt]

@Happypig375 Thanks for the feedback and I'm going to close this.

[BentTranberg]

I also believe this should not be a language suggestion, but I can see the suggestion has been well thought through. However, I felt this may very well be from a general programming languages perspective, not an F# perspective. The F# language, unlike other .NET languages, has mechanisms that make it natural to consider delegating such functionality to libraries. Without knowing the details well, I would have started on that route first. Maybe call for a community effort through a GitHub repo. Then, only if surprisingly any specific issues are encountered that seem to call for a language suggestion, perhaps end up here again.

The F# community already has access to highly efficient RPC implementations for F# in libraries like Bolero and Fable.Remoting. This again probably makes interest in gRPC less interesting for most of the F# community members. Even making a truly stand-alone RPC library - not gRPC - extracted from the mentioned libraries in F# has turned out to be of no interest to anybody but myself. I would have liked to have such a library - F# RPC that is - for use with NATS. Even F# gRPC for use with NATS would be of interest because that would have been a way to bridge F# and other technologies that use NATS for communication. Not of interest to myself - not now at least - but that could bring interest in F# to more developers or engineers in general.

If an initiative is taken elsewhere, it would be nice to know. It's possible to post a note about that here even though closed.

[Happypig375]

@BentTranberg Getting the .NET library to support F# should be the way to go as done by @conradwt at https://github.com/grpc/grpc-dotnet/issues/2263

[Happypig375]

https://github.com/grpc/grpc-dotnet/issues/66#issuecomment-549593015

We support other languages via protobuf-net.Grpc. That framework builds on top of Grpc.AspNetCore.Server, and it lets you use C#, VB.NET, F# to build gRPC services.

[Happypig375]

https://github.com/protobuf-net/protobuf-net.Grpc

Such an implementation is already there.

[BentTranberg]

Aha, so the current state of affairs is quite different from what I thought. Thank you very much for the information.

[Happypig375]

@BentTranberg You're welcome!