Visual Studio Build Tools Silent Install

Prakash mishra 21 Reputation points
2020-12-09T13:55:12.7+00:00

How to install Visual Studio build tools 2019 and its workload silently. Is there any way to provide log file path to log activities the installer does during the deployment ? installation using UI is happening but failing in case of silent and I could not figure out the issue with the installation.
I found two ways of deployment

  1. using chocolaty packages.
    https://chocolatey.org/packages/visualstudio2019buildtools#install

But this requires sme prereqs and looks like it is installing many things other than the required ones and also is failing in between.

  1. Using ms commandline
    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/install/use-command-line-parameters-to-install-visual-studio?view=vs-2019

This is throwing error when trying to install from powershell in quiet mode.

Also how to handle the uninstall and modify operations.

Visual Studio Setup
Visual Studio Setup
Visual Studio: A family of Microsoft suites of integrated development tools for building applications for Windows, the web and mobile devices.Setup: The procedures involved in preparing a software program or application to operate within a computer or mobile device.
972 questions
0 comments
Accepted answer
  1. Anna Xiu-MSFT 25,806 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor
    2020-12-10T04:27:03.12+00:00

    Hi @Prakash mishra ,

    Thank you for reporting it in Microsoft Q&A.

    If you want to install the Visual Studio Build Tools 2019 without needing to launch the installer UI, please try the following command line to perform a silent installation of C++ build tools workload.
    vs_buildtools.exe --quiet --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.VCTools

    In addition, about the activity logs, you can find it under %temp% folder.

    If it persists, could you share us more details about the error in order for us to investigate it further?
    Please download and run this collect.exe tool, go to %temp% folder and find the vslogs.zip file, upload it to https://onedrive.live.com/ and share the link here.

    Sincerely,
    Anna

    • If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.
      Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.
    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments

1 additional answer

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Prakash mishra 21 Reputation points
    2020-12-14T16:21:18.637+00:00

    Created the below script which worked. I am not sure if --passive and --quiet both goes together(imo it does not).
    This waits for the execution and installs the required workloads.
    The only thing I do not like here is the passing of log file explicitly for getting the status of the installation or any errors.

    PS Script:

    function install-VS19BuildTools{

    $AllArgs = "--quiet --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.ManagedDesktopBuildTools --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.WebBuildTools --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.NetCoreBuildTools --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows10SDK.18362 --add Microsoft.Net.Component.4.7.TargetingPack --includeRecommended --wait"

    $scriptRootPath = $PSScriptRoot
    $vsToolsPath = Join-Path $scriptRootPath "vs19_buildtools.exe"

    $Result = Start-Process $vsToolsPath -ArgumentList $AllArgs -Wait
    return $Result
    }

    install-VS19BuildTools

    0 comments