They also might be changed by product updates or upgrades. The required environment variables are specific to your installation and to the build architecture you choose. These shortcuts ensure all the required environment variables are set and ready to use. The shortcuts open developer command prompt windows by using these command files for specific combinations of host and target. For convenience, the installer also creates shortcuts in your Start menu. You can run one of these command files to set a specific host and target build architecture, Windows SDK version, and platform toolset. To make it easy to set these environment variables, the installer creates customized command files, or batch files, during installation. These variables are used to add the tools to the path, and to set the locations of include files, library files, and SDKs. To work correctly, the tools require several specific environment variables to be set. Each set of tools for a particular host and target build architecture is stored in its own directory. There are separate x86-hosted and 圆4-hosted compilers and tools to build code for x86, 圆4, ARM, and ARM64 targets. They're also used internally by the Visual Studio IDE. You can use all of these tools at the command line. The tools include the C/C++ compilers, linkers, assemblers, and other build tools, and matching libraries and header files. A platform toolset has all the C and C++ tools for a specific Visual Studio version. When you choose one of the C++ workloads in the Visual Studio Installer, it installs the Visual Studio platform toolset.

When you're satisfied with your selections, choose Install.

To build code by using the Visual Studio 2015 toolset, select the optional MSVC v140 build tools. You can select optional libraries and toolsets to include under Installation details. To install only the tools you need for C++ development, select the Visual C++ build tools workload. When you run the downloaded executable, it updates and runs the Visual Studio Installer.

If you only want the command-line toolset, download the Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017. For information on how to install C++ and Visual Studio, see Install C++ support in Visual Studio. If you've installed Visual Studio and a C++ workload, you have all the command-line tools.

Microsoft visual studio online compiler