Visual Studio Setup

Installation and containerization of the Visual Studio family of products

VS Archives - Visual Studio Setup

Disabling or moving the Visual Studio 2017 package cache is now generally available

May 10, 2017 May 10, 2017 05/10/17
Heath Stewart
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 ...

Documentation now live for moving or disabling the package cache

May 4, 2017 May 4, 2017 05/4/17
Heath Stewart
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 ...

vswhere is now installed with Visual Studio 2017

April 21, 2017 Apr 21, 2017 04/21/17
Heath Stewart
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 ...

Cleaning up the Visual Studio 2017 package cache

April 19, 2017 Apr 19, 2017 04/19/17
Heath Stewart
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 ...

Moving or disabling the package cache for Visual Studio 2017

April 17, 2017 Apr 17, 2017 04/17/17
Heath Stewart
In the latest preview release of Visual Studio we are introducing the ability to disable (or re-enable) the package cache, or move it to another drive. This can be done using the command line or the registry, which can be deployed on a domain using group policy. This will be generally available in Visual Studio in a few weeks - scheduled for ...

vswhere now searches older versions of Visual Studio

March 11, 2017 Mar 11, 2017 03/11/17
Heath Stewart
One of the top requests I kept hearing for vswhere was to also search older versions of Visual Studio. You can now do that starting with the latest release. Even if you don't have Visual Studio 2017 or newer installed - which means the query API is not even registered - you can use vswhere to find the installation root directory for Visual ...

Fast acquisition of vswhere

March 5, 2017 Mar 5, 2017 03/5/17
Heath Stewart
I introduced vswhere last week as an easy means to locate Visual Studio 2017 and newer, along with other products installed with our new installer that provides faster downloads and installs - even for full installs (which has roughly doubled in size with lots of new third-party content). vswhere was designed to be a fast, small, single-file ...

vswhere Available

February 25, 2017 Feb 25, 2017 02/25/17
Heath Stewart
After feedback on the VSSetup PowerShell module to query Visual Studio 2017 and related products, I'm pleased to say that a native, single-file executable is available on GitHub: vswhere. The VSSetup PowerShell module is also available on GitHub and provides a number of benefits for PowerShell scripts, but build tools and CMake and deployment ...

Visual Studio Setup PowerShell Module Available

January 25, 2017 Jan 25, 2017 01/25/17
Heath Stewart
To make the new setup configuration APIs more accessible to developers, we have published the "VSSetup" PowerShell module on powershellgallery.com, making it quick and easy to install. If you have Windows Management Framework (WMF) 5.0 or newer - installed with Windows 10 - or PowerShellGet for PowerShell 3.0 or 4.0, you can run the following...