I recently got a Win 11 machine and installed Visual Studio 2022, then I installed Visual Studio 2019 to support an old app. In the search feature on the Win task bar, when I enter visual studio it shows them listed like this:
Visual Studio 2022
Visual Studio 2019 (2)
It has this for "Blend" too.
Is this just from picking the same feature set(s) during the install? For example, SQL Data Tools. And/Or could it mean something isn't right with my env?
VS 2019 is in
Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe
VS 2022 is in Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\Common7\IDE\denvenv.exe
I'm having an issue with an old site in 2019, but I don't believe it's related. I am just curious why that (2) is there and what if any problems it could cause.
Thanks
I have Visual Studio build Tools 2017 installed on my PC.
Is it OK to uninstall Visual Studio Build Tools 2017 after installing the 2019 version? Is there software that cannot be built by 2019 version and instead requires 2017 to be built?
I am using Visual Studio Community 2019.
They are a separate set of tools, therefore you can safely remove the old building tools without affecting the stability of Visual Studio 2019.
However, MSbuild 16 shipped with Visual Studio 2019 introduces new features and some breaking changes which could result in compatibility problems (here the main announcement).
In case you run into them, you can always install the old Visual Studio 2017 Build Tools in Visual Studio 2019 by selecting the old tools via individual component. Then, you can change the toolset of the offending project by specifying the version you need as stated in msbuild documentation.
Only Visual Studio 2019 is present in VSIXInstaller, Visual Studio 2017 is missing and when I want to install the extension specifically for Visual Studio 2017 I can't do that
I believe this issue crops up due to the 'Visual Studio Extension File' not having the appropriate supported VS Version Numbers specified in the '.vsixmanifest'.
(Changing the supported Version Number range will allow support for previous or future versions of Visual Studio.)
Here is a Link to an answer of mine which covers the issue and resolution. (Which has a worked example of allowing VS 2015 where only VS 2012 was supported)
I am currently using Visual Studio 2015 for programming ASP.NET Core applications. I have the following questions regarding installing Visual Studio 2017:
What is considered to be best practice and/or cleanest method?
Should I install Visual Studio 2017 beside Visual Studio 2015?
Should I first uninstall Visual Studio 2015 and all .NET Core dependencies and then install Visual Studio 2017?
Are there any tools that would ensure a clean uninstall of Visual Studio 2015?
From page Visual Studio 2017 Platform Targeting and Compatibility
Compatibility with Previous Releases Installation
You can install and use Visual Studio 2017 alongside previous versions of Visual Studio, including Visual Studio 2015, Visual Studio 2013, and Visua Studio 2012.
So yes. you can install them without any problem.
VS 2013, VS 2015, and VS 2017 all work well side-by-side. VS 2012 can be a little dodgy on Windows 10, but should also work side-by-side. In theory VS 2010 should also work side-by-side with those, but I've run into quirks in the past with them interfering with one-another.
Projects should round-trip between 2015 and 2017 generally, although there are some one-way upgrade scenarios.
Note that if you really just need the older compiler toolset for some reason, you can also install VS 2017 and select the optional component Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.140 which installs the older v140 compiler which you can still use with the VS 2017 IDE. That said, there's not a lot of reason to do this since the VS 2015 & VS 2017 C++ standard libraries are binary compatible so you can mix them in a project.
See this blog post for information on VS 2017.
It sounds like you have done some projects in 2015 already, so you will probably want to keep it.
Once you open a project in a new version, it will try to upgrade the project and then you can't go back.
However, if you have multiple versions installed at the same time, when you try to open a project, say, from Windows Explorer, it will open it with the "Visual Studio Version Checker" and will look at the project file and determine which version to open it in.
Bottom line, if you have the hard drive space, there is no reason to not install them alongside each other.
In the past, it was recommended to install them in sequential order if you are installing multiple versions, but it doesn't sound like this is an issue for you and I don't know if that is even a problem anymore as it has been several versions since I have had to deal with that.
Good luck!
Personally, I would keep both - there have been multiple times through the years where you have compatibility issues and NEED to have the prior version(s). I've also had old project that will not upgrade and I've gone back and reinstalled old VS versions.
If you have no reason to keep VS2015 in your computer I would suggest uninstalling it.
I uninstalled VS2015 after installing VS2017 and later noticing that I was still using an old taskbar shortcut to VS2015.
So I was inadvertently still using VS2015.
Maybe some special cases require keeping older versions of VS along side the new version, but for the rest of us, I say, uninstall!
VS 2015 is the last version that is supported by Installshield LE.
If you have a need for building installers in the future, it will be useful to have VS 2015
1,2,3. Visual Studio 2017 has more features over 2015 and it contains 2015's current features so you don't need 2015 alongside 2017. Just stick with 2017. And I don't think you will have any problems while opening 2013 and 2015 projects with Visual Studio 2017.
Uninstall Tool is a good tool to use. It cleanses all the leftover files and registry entries after running the original uninstallation wizard and even tells you how many files will be cleaned after the required reboot.
For people continuing to read this, I have Visual Studio Professional 2008 (For Windows Embedded 6.5), 2010, 2015, 2017 and they all work even if open at the same time.
Edit: As stated in other answers, they need to be installed from oldest version to newest.
I have been using 2010 on a project. The project was built using cmake, when cmake chose to use the compiler Visual Studio 2010. Now I intend to move the whole set up of the project to Visual Studio 2013.
So, today I installed Visual Studio 2013. But when I try to use cmake to build the project for visual studio 2013, in the compiler list of cmake I cannot see any compiler of Visual studio 2013, the latest are Visual Studio 2012, Visual Studio 2012 win64, Visual Studio 2012 ARM.
Is there no exclusive compiler for Visual Studio 2013? Does the same compiler work for both VS2012 and VS2013? If Visual Studio 2013 indeed has an exclusive compiler, why can't cmake find the that compiler?
Thanks.
Try updating your CMake version.
The Configue dialog in cmake-gui for CMake 3.1 lists the respective entries as Visual Studio 12 2013:
In older CMake versions (older than 3.0) the entries omitted the year and showed only the version number, so the entry just reads Visual Studio 12.
If your CMake version is even older, there might not be support for Visual Studio 2013 at all. However, you should still be able to open project files generated for an older Visual Studio version. This might require an additional conversion step by Visual Studio, which might mess things up.
Upgrading CMake is definitely the preferred solution.