Can FSharp.Formatting support documenting programs?

[baronfel]

Hi folks! I was looking into using FSharp.Formatting to generate docs for FsAutoComplete and quickly ran into this constraint. I was wondering if there was a specific technical reason why executables are not allowed?

[nojaf]

I don't think there is a technical constraint here. @dsyme might know the historical context.

[github-actions]

🤖 This is an automated response from Repo Assist.

As nojaf noted, there's no deep technical reason executables are excluded — it's a policy filter. The check lives in ProjectCracker.fs around line 501:

elif not info.IsLibrary then
    printfn "  skipping project '%s' because it isn't a library" shortName
    None

where IsLibrary is set to true only when OutputType is "library".

A minimal fix would be to add a CLI flag (e.g. --includeExecutableProjects or --outputType Library,Exe) that relaxes this filter. For executables that expose public modules/types (like many tools and programs), the API docs generation would work identically to a library.

If someone wants to tackle this, the changes would be:

1. Add an optional includeExe parameter to crack in ProjectCracker.fs
2. Change the elif not info.IsLibrary guard to also allow executables when the flag is set
3. Thread the flag through the CLI argument parsing

This should be a fairly self-contained and low-risk change.

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[dsyme]

/repo-assist try making a PR for this please

[github-actions]

🤖 This is an automated response from Repo Assist.

I've created a draft PR that implements the --allowExecutableProjects flag as described above. The changes are minimal and opt-in — existing users are unaffected.

The fix threads a new allowExecutableProjects parameter through crackProjects and relaxes the not info.IsLibrary guard when the flag is set. Build passes with 0 errors.

Generated by Repo Assist for issue #918

To install this workflow, run gh aw add githubnext/agentics/workflows/repo-assist.md@828ac109efb43990f59475cbfce90ede5546586c. View source at https://github.com/githubnext/agentics/tree/828ac109efb43990f59475cbfce90ede5546586c/workflows/repo-assist.md.