FSI.exe does not work under Ubuntu 10.10

Question

Update: Tried November CTP release. Same error message. Forgot to mention that this server has the Ubuntu server edition installed. I don\'t have this issue on my Ubuntu

Answer 1

Feel really awkward to answer my own question. Anyway, I'll answer it so other people can benefit from.

First of all, install libreadline-dev and libreadline5 so you can get rid of the following error message

Failed to install ctrl-c handler - Ctrl-C handling will not be available. Error was: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation

If you encounter fsi.exe stuck issue, try

 fsi --gui-

It works perfectly in my case.

Here is my understanding of why such an issue happened. If you look into the code, you will find out fsi.exe actually references System.Windows.Forms, which further links to the Window system. In my case, I ran fsi in a server without X system installed. Consequently, fsi stuck there trying to talk to the nonexistent X. That explains why I don't have the issue in my desktop.