launch Visual Studio Installer to install the C++ tools

[ctaggart]

rust-init.exe does a good job at detecting for missing C++ tools. It would be even better if it detected an existing Visual Studio installation to prompt with something like: Would you like to launch Visual Studio Installer to install the C++ tools? and then do so.

The scenario is that I have Visual Studio 2017 installed and I want to install Rust. Currently you get this prompt #1114 (comment) . It would be amazing if rust-init.exe launched the Visual Studio Installer to install the missing dependencies. Here is a PowerShell script that I ran as admin to get them installed:

# start the Visual Studio Installer to install Rust dependencies
# current component names are:
#   VC++ 2017 version 15.7 v14.14 latest v141 tools
#   Windows 10 SDK (10.0.17134.0)

# get the latest Visual Studio installation path
$installationPath = & "${env:ProgramFiles(x86)}\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere.exe" -latest -property installationPath

# launch the installer (must be admin)
& "${env:ProgramFiles(x86)}\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vs_installershell.exe" modify `
    --installPath $installationPath `
    --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Tools.x86.x64 `
    --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows10SDK

I took notes in ctaggart#1 while making this.

[Diggsey]

I would be happy to accept a PR for this, although we'd need a fallback for detecting visual studio: I have VS2017 installed and vswhere is not present.

[ctaggart]

To include the preview Visual Studio version, you must add -prerelease to the first command. This just worked for me on a computer with only Visual Studio Community 2019 Preview.

$installationPath = & "${env:ProgramFiles(x86)}\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere.exe" -latest -property installationPath -prerelease
& "${env:ProgramFiles(x86)}\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vs_installershell.exe" modify `
    --installPath $installationPath `
    --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Tools.x86.x64 `
    --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows10SDK

[ctaggart]

An alternative to this is to add a .vsconfig file (based on the Terminal .vsconfig) to your project and open Visual Studio there.

{
  "version": "1.0",
  "components": [
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Tools.x86.x64",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows10SDK"
  ]
}

[kinnison]

Is there a safe and consistent way we can launch this from rustup-init.exe ?

[workingjubilee]

@rustbot label: +O-windows

[cataggar]

It turns out that the Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows10SDK component is actually the "Windows Universal C Runtime`. You can see that at:
https://docs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/install/workload-component-id-vs-community

I exported my current config and I do not have the component installed. I think the required components are now:

{
  "version": "1.0",
  "components": [
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Tools.x86.x64",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Redist.14.Latest",
  ]
}

If I save this to a visual-cpp-build-tools.vsconfig, I can open Visual Studio Installer and import configuration to install any missing components:

You can see it select those two Individual components, and I already have them installed:

It would be great if someone could add a screenshot without them installed yet.

[rami3l]

Fixed by #2954.