Multiple Visual Studio version support in Gen Build Tool

Products

• Gen
• Gen - Run Time Distributed
• Gen - Workstation Toolset

Issue/Introduction

The Gen Build Tool can support multiple versions of Visual Studio.

This article will provide details on what versions are supported.

Environment

Gen Build Tool using either Visual Studio 2015, 2017, 2019 or 2022.

Resolution

Starting with Visual Studio 2017, individual components can be installed that provide support for older versions of the Visual C++ compiler.  The following compilers can be used with the following installed versions:

 

Installed Version	Support Visual C++ compilers	Build Tool OPT.VSVERSION
Visual Studio 2015	2015	VS140
Visual Studio 2017	2015, 2017	VS140, VS150
Visual Studio 2019	2015, 2017, 2019	VS140, VS150, VS160
Visual Studio 2022	2015, 2017, 2019, 2022	VS140, VS150, VS160, VS170

 

Visual Studio 2022 no longer delivers .NET Framework 4.0.  Building Gen generated C# code will result in an error regardless of the value for OPT.VSVERSION.  See Error MSB364 using VS 2022 to build Gen .NET C# applications for details.