set GPIO pin as Output on MSP430f5510 with internal pullup resistor

A pull-up resistor would not make sense on an output. Why do you think you need it?

I am interfacing ESP8266 with msp430

couple of pins on that chip need to be pulled high or low depending on requirement
There was a design mistake on my custom board and the MCU pins are directly shorted to ESP8266 pins
as per Expressif design the pins need to be connected to VCC or gnd via resistors or else the chip does not function properly :/

Kindly help me

The connected IC cannot figure out if the voltage level comes from the MCU pin directly or from a resistor. Only thing could be at startup until the MCU's pins are initialized to be an output.

Yes u are absolutely right as per concept - In this case my bad, but i have verified this on a breadboard too
trial 1 : made all the connection and connected ESP8266 GPIO to vcc and gnd as per schematic
nothing happened , failed to communicate with the chip

trial 2 : made all the connection and connected ESP8266 GPIO to vcc and gnd as per schematic but this time I added a resistor in between and it works, chip starts responding

remove the resistor in between and it stops responding

Could you upload the schematic to have a look?

You can simply configure the pins as inputs with pull-up resistor. The voltage level is then set by the resistor.

If the ESP reads the pins only after a reset, this might have been too late. If that is the case, you have to reset the ESP again, or add hardware resistors.

The important things are GPIO 0,2, EN and 15 pins on recommended schematics ( bottom image left side )

Vcc to resistor and to the IC - we thought they are just current limiting and ignored them :(

To quote the documentation: "On every reset/book/wakeup, GPIOxx MUST keep ...". The first reset happens before the MSP can initialize its pins, so you have no choice but to add resistors.

The MSP has no control over the device's RST pin?

I tried configuring it as input with pull up resistors as suggested and it did not work

I manually reset the ESP by pulling it low for a second once MSP has started ... It still not responding...