Portable packages inspector (and downloader) for VS Build Tools.
Originally, I only needed the build tools because it is required by Flutter. I don't like installing VS directly because of its size and the installation is not fully transparent (will mess up my file associations, require admin rights, etc). So I tried PortableBuildTools, but it still doesn't meet the Flutter requirement and doesn't have much customization. I checked the Flutter doctor source code to see what's wrong and it's more complicated than I thought.
Currently, this tool still doesn't achieve what it's intended to do, but I think some people might want to check it. It consumes much of my free time so I'm not sure if I can finish it (especially the file extraction part). PR(s) are always welcome and I will see what I can do to help. It's not perfect but it's done. PRs welcome, or open an issue if needed.
- I don't know much about C/C++ and Visual Studio, all I care is to build a desktop app using Flutter (without installing Visual Studio)
- This tool is unofficial and there's no guarantee that everything will continue to work properly
- By using this tool you agree that I'm not responsible for anything and you're ready to accept any risk
- If something is broken (when parsing/downloading packages), start looking at Visual Studio Bootstrapper Docs and/or this simple wiki I made.
- No need to install Visual Studio
- Ability to use specific build tools versions (e.g.
VS 2022) - Customize workloads (e.g.
Desktop development with C++,.NET desktop development) - Filter packages based on preferred arch and language (e.g.
X64,en-US) - Remove unneeded packages or add packages that are not included in workloads
- Check package types, total files, and download size
- Download and verify files checksum (or just export the details as
csvandjson) - Extract downloaded files for portable installation (currently support
vsixand Windows SDK) - Can be recognized by
vswhere(will write some values to Windows registry). Please modify path(s) onstate.jsonmanually when moving root directory
Note: There are many variables that can be customized within the script. The most important ones are located at the beginning (vs_package_extract, vs_package_win_sdk, etc). Please include your variable modifications when posting issue so I can investigate it more easily.
- Install Python and an IDE (I personally use VS Code)
- Clone this repo and open it (the project folder) on your IDE
- Create a Conda or virtual environment if needed (docs)
- Install the required Python libraries using
pip install -r requirements.txt(conda install --file requirements.txt) - Open the notebook and customize things, then run the notebook
| Status | Task | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| ✅ | Extract vsix files | There are some tiny vsix files that can't be extracted (because there's nothing to extract?), but I think they're not important at all so it's safe to ignore |
| ✅ | Extract Windows SDK files | Currently done by temporarily installing Windows SDK (WinSdkInstaller) |
| ✅ | Set environment variables and registry keys | Done, as minimal as possible. There might be issues depending on how your software detect Visual Studio installation |
| ✅ | Compatibility with Flutter | Run flutter clean, flutter run --verbose, and check CMakeConfigureLog.yaml in case of error. It's also possible to change error verbosity by running CMake/MSBuild (with modified params) manually |
| ✅ | Compatibility with vswhere |
Will need to copy vswhere to %PROGRAMFILES(X86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer. It's recognized correctly, but some tools like CMake may also use multiple COM interfaces to detect VS instances. COM query is barely supported because I'm not familiar with it |
| ⬜ | Migrate to PowerShell and don't use cmd tools (reg, setx, etc) |
cmd is very unpredictable. It doesn't support single quotes and has multiple escape characters (%, \, ^). Path with spaces and backslash at the end of path may also break things. And if that's not enough, the executed bat file may behave differently than when running the commands on cmd directly |
| ⬜ | Linux support | May need to use pathlib and change Windows SDK extract method. Even then, it may still be impossible to compile things correctly on Linux (missing dependencies, etc) |
| ⬜ | Use pure Python and remove external libraries | Not top priority, already possible to convert ipynb to py. Will need to implement our own CaseInsensitiveDict or always use lower |
Show screenshots (may be outdated)
- BuildToolsInspector under The Unlicense
- Visual Studio under Microsoft License