Simplify Visual Studio Installation

Why, You Ask?

Every year, like clockwork, I find myself setting up my local dev environment from scratch. And every time, it's the same old song and dance: downloading, installing, configuring.

It's time-consuming and frustrating. I'm tired of it.

Can It Be Easier?

What if setting up a new machine, rolling it back, or tweaking it could be as simple as running a build on a server? What if I told you we could apply the same principles of automation to our local setups?

Let's Find A Solution

Creating a new development environment shouldn't be a chore. It should be quick, painless, and even a little bit fun. To turn this dream into reality, I need two things: the right software and the perfect setup. That's where winget and .vsconfig come in.

With a list of essential software and some PowerShell tricks, I began to make boring tasks automatic. I picked each program, from 7Zip to Visual Studio, for its important use. But the adventure of automating everything is a story for another time.

Streamlining Visual Studio Installation

My main event? Automating Visual Studio installation. Using winget, I can install Visual Studio with just a line:

winget install -e --id Microsoft.VisualStudio.2022.Enterprise --silent

But I didn't stop there. With the --override flag, I tailored the installation to include specific workloads, like this:

winget install -e --id Microsoft.VisualStudio.2022.Enterprise --silent --override "--wait --quiet --addProductLang En-us --config C:\vs2022.vsconfig"

This method sets up Visual Studio with the workload I need without having to manually select each package.

What's .vsconfig?

.vsconfig helps me easily replicate my development environment wherever I am. It's a JSON file that, with just a few clicks in the Visual Studio Installer, allows me to compress my environment workloads into a neat package. This approach is not only perfect for keeping build servers and personal development environments in sync with identical workloads, but it also simplifies sharing updates and changes with teammates.

Example: vs2022.vsconfig

{
  "version": "1.0",
  "components": [
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Roslyn.Compiler",
    "Microsoft.Component.MSBuild",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Roslyn.LanguageServices",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.SQL.LocalDB.Runtime",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.CoreEditor",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.CoreEditor",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.TypeScript.TSServer",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.ComponentGroup.WebToolsExtensions",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.JavaScript.TypeScript",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.TextTemplating",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.NuGet",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.IntelliTrace.FrontEnd",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Debugger.JustInTime",
    "Component.Microsoft.VisualStudio.LiveShare.2022",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.IntelliCode",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.ClassDesigner",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.GraphDocument",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.CodeMap",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.CoreIde",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Tools.x86.x64",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Graphics.Tools",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.DiagnosticTools",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows11SDK.22621",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.ATL",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.SecurityIssueAnalysis",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.ComponentGroup.ArchitectureTools.Native",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Redist.14.Latest",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.ComponentGroup.NativeDesktop.Core",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows11Sdk.WindowsPerformanceToolkit",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.CppBuildInsights",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.ComponentGroup.WebToolsExtensions.CMake",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.CMake.Project",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.TestAdapterForBoostTest",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.TestAdapterForGoogleTest",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.ASAN",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Vcpkg",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Tools.ARM64EC",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.NativeDesktop",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Runtimes.ARM64EC.Spectre"
  ]
}

You can create a .vsconfig file with these easy steps:

1. Launch the Visual Studio Installer and choose to modify your setup.
2. Hit More and then select the option to Export your settings into a .vsconfig file.

That's it!

Why Bother With All This?

I'm all about making life easier, not harder. Thanks to winget and Visual Studio's .vsconfig, what used to eat up a lot of time now takes no time at all.

Setting up a fresh development environment is now a piece of cake - and I mean the kind of delicious cake you can buy ready-made but tastes as good as anything you'd bake yourself. So here's to spending less time on setup and more on the fun stuff: coding.