vscode-msvc

A program that launches Visual Studio Code with MSVC Toolchain support.

Pre-requisites

• Visual Studio Code installed;
• Visual Studio Build Tools installed along with MSVC and Windows SDK;
• VS Code must be added to PATH (This is done automatically when VS Code is installed, but check if you can run the command code from the terminal just in case);
• An environment variable VSBUILDTOOLSDIR must be set, containing the path of Visual Studio Build Tools directory (usually: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\<visual-studio-edition-year>\BuildTools, may be different for your system).

Installation

• Make sure pre-requisites are fulfilled.
• Download the latest version of vscode-msvc from the Releases section. There are two files, vscode-msvc-x86.exe and vscode-msvc-x64.exe. They are for the 32-bit and 64-bit MSVC toolchains respectively, and do not denote the program architecture. You'd want to download both for convenience.
• Copy them to your Desktop/Workspace folder and use them as per your requirements.

Known issues

• For switching between x64 and x86 MSVC Toochain the current instance of VS Code needs to be closed, otherwise the new instance with not launch with the desired toolchain support. This is not a bug, but an issue with VS Code itself where the environment variables of new instances are not properly reset.

License

vscode-msvc is available under the MIT License.