Visual Studio Setup
Installation and containerization of the Visual Studio family of products
Latest posts
Configure Visual Studio across your organization with .vsconfig
Add a .vsconfig file to your solution root directory to configure Visual Studio consistently across your organization.
Older versions of Visual Studio 2017 will not install in Windows Server 2019 containers
If you try to install Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017 into a Windows Server 2019 or newer container image, such as or , the install will quickly terminate without error and without installing anything. This is due, in part, to changes to the Windows Server container image to reduce size and improve startup performance. To install into Windows Server Core 2019 or newer, please download Visual Studio 2017 version 15.9 or newer, including Visual Studio 2019 Preview 1. Note: all previous Windows container images are now available in the Microsoft Container Registry (MCR), and all new container images includ...
Workaround for 0x8007007e when trying to to locate an instance of Visual Studio
We are investigating how a particular rare problem occurs that can prevent clients like VSIXInstaller.exe, vswhere.exe, and others from finding any Visual Studio instance that results in an error similar to the following: This is the CLSID for the Visual Studio Installer query API, and despite being registered the COM server DLL is missing. Workaround The easiest way to work around this problem is to repair any instance of Visual Studio. Warning: this will reset your Visual Studio settings: Along with resetting your Visual Studio settings, this can take quite a while to complete. A faster wa...
Docker recipes available for Visual Studio Build Tools
Use or contribute your own Dockerfiles on GitHub to help others build similar workloads with Visual Studio Build Tools.
No container image for Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017
The size and permutations of Build Tools 2017 container images are too great to publish official images, but here's how you can create your own tailored images.
vswhere now supports -utf8 to override console code page
You can now force vswhere to output JSON using the UTF-8 encoding.
Updated documentation for Visual Studio Build Tools container
The .NET Framework may not be correctly installed into a Windows Server Core container, and managed code - like the compilers - may fail. The documentation was updated with how to work around this.
vswhere now supports -requiresAny to find instances with one or more components installed
You can now use -requiresAny with vswhere to specify that any component ID passed to -requires will satisfy the query.
Set both x86 and x64 registry views for custom setup policy
Due to a bug in older versions of Visual Studio 2017, you should set the CachePath policy in both 32- and 64-bit views of the registry.
How to install Builds Tools in a Docker container
Preview new documentation for how to install Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017 into a Docker container.
New vswhere: now with more properties!
Read about all the new properties output by vswhere.
Installing Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017 in a Docker container
Follow this guidance to install Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017 into a Docker container and save the image for later.
Cleaning up corrupt Visual Studio instances
When older versions of Visual Studio 2017 report an error about not being able to load the instance, follow these instructions to clean up corrupt instances and re-install.
vswhere version 2.0 released
A new major version of vswhere is released with the breaking change to filter out preview releases by default.
Disabling or moving the Visual Studio 2017 package cache is now generally available
With the release of Visual Studio 2017 version 15.2, the ability to disable or move the package cache is now generally available and documented. Basically, payloads are removed after being installed or repaired, and we will download them again if ever needed (like when repairing the product instance). This does mean if you work offline and need to repair you will need to re-connect to the internet or from wherever you installed Visual Studio (like a network layout). See our release notes for more information about what's new in 15.2 and download today!
Documentation now live for moving or disabling the package cache
I previously wrote about moving or disabling the package cache for Visual Studio 2017, which is a feature in the latest preview of Visual Studio 2017 and will be generally available update 15.2 is released. We have now published the documentation along with related material for administrators or developers looking to take more control of their installations, including: If you're in the Preview channel please give the no-cache policy and send us feedback using the Feedback tool. If you're not in the Preview channel and interested in trying features early, please visit https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/pr...
vswhere is now installed with Visual Studio 2017
Starting in the latest preview release of Visual Studio version 15.2 (26418.1-Preview), you can now find vswhere installed in "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer" (on 32-bit operating systems before Windows 10, you should use "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer"). While I initially made vswhere.exe available via NuGet and Chocolatey for easy acquisition, some projects do not use package managers nor do most projects want to commit binaries to a git repository (since each version with little compression would be downloaded to every repo without a filter like git LFS). So starting...
Cleaning up the Visual Studio 2017 package cache
With the ability to disable or move the package cache for Visual Studio 2017 and other products installed with the new installer, packages are removed for whatever instance(s) you are installing, modifying, or repairing. If you have a lot of instances and want to clean all of them up easily from the command line - perhaps scripting it for users in an organization - you can combine tools such as vswhere or the VSSetup PowerShell module with the installer at %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vs_installer.exe. Batch script with vswhere You can get the installation path for all instances and ...