VS developer environment not found after following tutorial steps; blocked from building · Issue #14352 · microsoft/vscode-cpptools · GitHub
Skip to content

VS developer environment not found after following tutorial steps; blocked from building #14352

Closed
Bug
#14361
#14358
Closed
VS developer environment not found after following tutorial steps; blocked from building#14352
Bug
#14361
#14358
Labels
Language ServicebugfixedCheck the Milestone for the release in which the fix is or will be available.tasks/build/debugAn issue relating to tasks.json (e.g. build issues)
Milestone
1.32.0

Description

@gknighted
gknighted
opened on Apr 4, 2026

Type: Bug

Blocked from building code by the notification "cl.exe build and debug active file requires the Visual Studio developer environment."

  1. Uninstall existing VS Code and Developer Tools to start clean
  2. Install VS Code
  3. From the Welcome page, click on "Get started with C++ development"
  4. Install Microsoft.VisualStudio.2022.BuildTools using the instructions provided there, and proceed to follow additional instructions, hitting buttons, etc.
  5. Close VS Code
  6. type "developer" into Start Menu to launch developer command prompt
  7. confirm cl is recognized in developer command prompt
  8. Launch VS Code
  9. Go back to the C++ specific Welcome Page, and under the "Apply the Visual Studio developer environment" step, hit the button "Set Developer Environment". Receive a notification of success saying "amd64 developer environment for Visual Studio Build Tools 2022 successfully set."
  10. Go to my *.cpp file, and hit "Run C/C++ file"
  11. Choose "C/C++: cl.exe build and debug active file"

Expected result: code builds

Actual result: Get the failure notification "cl.exe build and debug active file requires the Visual Studio developer environment." This notification offers a button "Apply Developer Environment" but when I go through that step it doesn't help and gives me the additional failure notification "The source code could not be built because the Visual Studio developer environment was not applied."

All support info I find suggests this failure notification is due to not launching VS Code from the Developer Command Prompt, but I have done that.

This is possibly related to #14353 since they are both occurring for me.

If it helps to give you more confidence in my repro steps, I can take a screen recording of all of this and attach the video. Let me know if you'd like me to do that.

Image Image

Extension version: 1.31.4
VS Code version: Code 1.114.0 (e7fb5e96c0730b9deb70b33781f98e2f35975036, 2026-04-01T09:27:11Z)
OS version: Windows_NT x64 10.0.19045
Modes:

System Info
Item Value
CPUs Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2320 CPU @ 3.00GHz (4 x 2993)
GPU Status 2d_canvas: unavailable_software
GPU0: VENDOR= 0x1002, DEVICE=0x677b [AMD Radeon HD 7400 Series], DRIVER_VENDOR=Google, DRIVER_VERSION=8.17.10.1404
GPU1: VENDOR= 0x1414, DEVICE=0x008c [Microsoft Basic Render Driver], DRIVER_VERSION=10.0.19041.5794
Machine model name:
Machine model version:
direct_rendering_display_compositor: disabled_off_ok
gpu_compositing: disabled_software
multiple_raster_threads: enabled_on
opengl: disabled_off
rasterization: disabled_software
raw_draw: disabled_off_ok
skia_graphite: disabled_off
trees_in_viz: disabled_off
video_decode: disabled_software
video_encode: disabled_software
webgl: unavailable_software
webgl2: unavailable_software
webgpu: unavailable_software
webnn: unavailable_software
Load (avg) undefined
Memory (System) 11.96GB (2.46GB free)
Process Argv . --crash-reporter-id 446329a1-4bb8-420a-8b52-627c7d2b9460
Screen Reader no
VM 0%
A/B Experiments 
vsliv368:30146709
vswsl492cf:30256860
binariesv615:30325510
nativeloc1:31344060
dwcopilot:31170013
dwoutputs:31242946
copilot_t_ci:31333650
e5gg6876:31282496
pythonrdcb7:31342333
6518g693:31463988
aj953862:31281341
4f60g487:31327383
6abeh943:31336334
envsdeactivate2:31464701
cloudbuttont:31379625
aihoversummaries_t:31469308
3efgi100_wstrepl:31403338
56b7f661:31457055
use-responses-api:31390855
defaultusage:31403421
ec5jj548:31422691
cp_cls_t_966_ss:31454198
inlinechat_v2_hd992725:31485760
4je02754:31466945
c3h7c220:31478652
cp_cls_c_1081:31454833
e9c30283:31461165
test_treatment2:31471001
idci7584:31464702
showingstats:31481873
i54ji102:31458073
534a6447:31478749
7ef87755:31458076
chat:31457767
t-some:31486549
cpptoolsoff-v2:31475362
signintitlebar:31487064
db0gd219:31481871
ec1eg703:31488002
ddid_t:31478206

Activity

  1. gknighted
    changed the title [-]VS developer environment not found after following tutorial steps[/-] [+]VS developer environment not found after following tutorial steps; blocked from building[/+] on Apr 4, 2026

  2. sean-mcmanus commented on Apr 6, 2026

    @sean-mcmanus
    Sean McManus (sean-mcmanus)
    on Apr 6, 2026
    Contributor

    gknighted Can you try NOT starting VS Code from the developer command prompt? And instead just use the "Apply the Visual Studio developer environment"?

  3. gknighted commented on Apr 7, 2026

    @gknighted
    gknighted
    on Apr 7, 2026
    Author

    @gknighted Can you try NOT starting VS Code from the developer command prompt? And instead just use the "Apply the Visual Studio developer environment"?

    Sure. Just launching VS Code from the Start Menu, I tried a couple different ways of applying the developer environment but I'm still getting the same result I reported above, not able to build because of the notification "The source code could not be built because the Visual Studio developer environment was not applied."

    Here's the ways I tried:

    1. Trying to Run Codedirectly after launching VS Code
    • Try to Run Code
    • Image
    • Click "Apply Developer Environment"
    • Image
    1. Using "Set Visual Studio Developer Environment"
    • Image
    • Image
    • Try to Run Code
    • Image
    • Click "Apply Developer Environment"
    • Image
    1. Using the "Set Developer Environment" button on the Welcome page
    Image

    Same experience as (2).

  4. Sean McManus (sean-mcmanus)
    added
    bug
    Language Service
    tasks/build/debugAn issue relating to tasks.json (e.g. build issues)
    on Apr 7, 2026
  5. github-project-automation
    added this to cpptoolson Apr 7, 2026
  6. Sean McManus (sean-mcmanus)
    added the
    Bug
    issue type on Apr 7, 2026
  7. Sean McManus (sean-mcmanus)
    added this to the 1.32 milestone on Apr 7, 2026

  8. sean-mcmanus commented on Apr 7, 2026

    @sean-mcmanus
    Sean McManus (sean-mcmanus)
    on Apr 7, 2026
    Contributor

    gknighted Ok, we'll look into it.

  9. bobbrow commented on Apr 7, 2026

    @bobbrow
    Bob Brown (bobbrow)
    on Apr 7, 2026
    Contributor

    gknighted
    After you have applied the Developer environment, please do the following:

    1. Run the Terminal: Show Environment Contributions command in VS Code
    2. Navigate to the ## Extension: ms-vscode.cpptools section
    3. Share the list of environment variables that are appearing there.
    • Please note there is personal information in the values of the variables. You can delete all the values before sharing them (e.g. everything after the = signs). We should just need to know which variables are being saved to determine what's missing.

  10. bobbrow commented on Apr 7, 2026

    @bobbrow
    Bob Brown (bobbrow)
    on Apr 7, 2026
    Contributor

    @gknighted After you have applied the Developer environment, please do the following:

    1. Run the Terminal: Show Environment Contributions command in VS Code
    2. Navigate to the ## Extension: ms-vscode.cpptools section
    3. Share the list of environment variables that are appearing there.
    • Please note there is personal information in the values of the variables. You can delete all the values before sharing them (e.g. everything after the = signs). We should just need to know which variables are being saved to determine what's missing.

    It is also possible that the problem might be with your Path environment variable and we still can't find cl.exe after updating the build environment. Can you start a new terminal in VS Code and type cl.exe in it to see if Windows is able to find the compiler?

  11. Bob Brown (bobbrow)
    moved this to Triage in cpptoolson Apr 7, 2026

  12. gknighted commented on Apr 8, 2026

    @gknighted
    gknighted
    on Apr 8, 2026
    Author

    Thank you for taking a look Bob!

    When I type cl.exe into a Terminal pane opened in VS Code, I get:

    PS VSCode_CPlusPlus> cl.exe
Microsoft (R) C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 19.44.35224 for x64
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

usage: cl [ option... ] filename... [ /link linkoption... ]

    And attached is the text file that is the result of the "Show Environment Contributions" command.
    Environment Contributions.md

    Both of these give the same results whether I launch VS Code from the developer command prompt, or whether I launch it from the Start Menu and then run the "Set Visual Studio Developer Environment" command.

    Please let me know if there's any other way I can help.

  13. bobbrow commented on Apr 8, 2026

    @bobbrow
    Bob Brown (bobbrow)
    on Apr 8, 2026
    Contributor

    Thank you. In addition to the variables you've listed, cpptools is expecting to find UCRTVersion, WindowsSdkBinPath, and WindowsSdkDir which your environment does not seem to have. Could you tell us which version of the Windows SDK you have and how you installed it? Are you able to compile a simple source file (preferably one that includes Windows.h or some standard headers) in your environment in its current state?

  14. 4 remaining items

  15. gknighted commented on Apr 8, 2026

    @gknighted
    gknighted
    on Apr 8, 2026 via email
    Author

  16. bobbrow commented on Apr 8, 2026

    @bobbrow
    Bob Brown (bobbrow)
    on Apr 8, 2026
    Contributor

    Ah. I see. I had assumed you were talking about the C++ Walkthrough page in VS Code (below).

    Image

    https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/cpp/config-msvc#_check-your-microsoft-visual-c-installation

    Thanks for linking that page. Prerequisites step 3 does not mention the Windows SDK specifically though it should have been selected by default in the installer when you select "Desktop Development with C++". We can call that out specifically. I'll have to think about what kind of check could be done to verify the dependency for the other section.

  17. Bob Brown (bobbrow)
    closed this as completedin #14358on Apr 8, 2026
  18. github-project-automation
    moved this from Triage to Done in cpptoolson Apr 8, 2026
  19. Sean McManus (sean-mcmanus)
    added
    fixedCheck the Milestone for the release in which the fix is or will be available.
    on Apr 8, 2026
  20. Sean McManus (sean-mcmanus)
    modified the milestones: 1.32, 1.32.0 on Apr 8, 2026

  21. gknighted commented on Apr 9, 2026

    @gknighted
    gknighted
    on Apr 9, 2026
    Author

    Bob Brown (@bobbrow) Ah, I see, thanks for the additional info. I have a better understanding of what should be happening now, but I'm still missing environment variables if I'm following the instructions on the "C++ Walkthrough page in VS Code".

    This whole time I have been trying to follow both the instructions on what you call "C++ Walkthrough page in VS Code" (which I've been referring to as the "C++ part of the VS Code Welcome page"), and the webpage https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/cpp/config-msvc.

    Perhaps we can focus just on the instructions in "C++ Walkthrough page in VS Code" for the moment?

    Because the winget command scrolls off-screen as seen in your above image and I was just copying and pasting the contents of that text pane into the Terminal pane of VS Code, I wasn't paying too much to the arguments beyond winget install Microsoft.VisualStudio.2022.BuildTools which is why I wasn't aware of the WindowsSDK and other packages.

    I have been running the entire command though and just to make sure I just ran it again and it is the result of running this command including all of these packages that has me in my current state of missing the environment variables you identified, so my claim according to my understanding is that the "C++ Walkthrough page in VS Code" instructions are not sufficient to get my environment properly set up.

    Here's what I see when I launch Visual Studio Installer:

    Image Then I click on "Modify": Image I see the same MSVC Build Tools checked that are in your image. But I don't see the Windows SDK. So then I expand "Desktop development with C++" on the right under "Installation Details" and see there's one "Windows 10 SDK" option, so I check that and then hit "Modify": Image

    Once I have done that and installed the Windows 10 SDK, now everything is working as expected in VS Code and I can build.

    Therefore, with the current Walkthrough, I would still have been stuck if I hadn't received your support.

    It seems like maybe because the Windows 10 SDK has some kind of "out of support" designation, it isn't getting installed by the winget command provided by the Walkthrough even though it is part of the command? Because Microsoft extended the security updates for Windows 10 for one year and my machine cannot upgrade to Windows 11, I am still running Windows 10.

    Thanks again for your time and engagement on this, I really appreciate it!

  22. gknighted commented on Apr 9, 2026

    @gknighted
    gknighted
    on Apr 9, 2026
    Author

    Bob Brown (@bobbrow) And then with regards to https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/cpp/config-msvc, thanks for making that update to the page. I'm only one opinion of course so please use your discretion as to how much to consider it, but if you don't mind me providing a bit of feedback on your pull request change, I'm not sure those changes would have been effective for me. This is because the mention of the MSVC toolset and SDK happen in a paragraph starting with "If you have a recent version of Visual Studio". I don't have Visual Studio, I only have VS Code, so I would have thought that paragraph was not applicable to me and I would have focused on the next paragraph that was applicable to me that starts with "You can also install the Desktop development with C++ workload without a full Visual Studio IDE installation."

    It might be clearer to make it explicit that these products are needed regardless of whether you have Visual Studio or not.

  23. bobbrow commented on Apr 9, 2026

    @bobbrow
    Bob Brown (bobbrow)
    on Apr 9, 2026
    Contributor

    It seems like maybe because the Windows 10 SDK has some kind of "out of support" designation, it isn't getting installed by the winget command provided by the Walkthrough even though it is part of the command? Because Microsoft extended the security updates for Windows 10 for one year and my machine cannot upgrade to Windows 11, I am still running Windows 10.

    This might be a big part of why the winget command failed. The version listed in the installer doesn't match what our command was trying to install. I'm not sure when or why this changed. There used to be a newer version of the Windows 10 SDK that isn't available via the VS installer anymore. There is no Windows 10 SDK listed in the documentation anymore either. I will submit a PR to change the version number to match what's in the installer now (19041).

    Because the winget command scrolls off-screen as seen in your above image and I was just copying and pasting the contents of that text pane into the Terminal pane of VS Code, I wasn't paying too much to the arguments beyond winget install Microsoft.VisualStudio.2022.BuildTools which is why I wasn't aware of the WindowsSDK and other packages.

    In my PR, I will also add a note that the command scrolls off the page and should be copied in its entirety. When I wrote this walkthrough I did try to get VS Code to wrap this element so it wouldn't scroll off the page, but it only actually wrapped it in Markdown Preview mode which was frustrating and I eventually gave up. I'll see if Copilot can help me come up with a workaround or something.

    This is because the mention of the MSVC toolset and SDK happen in a paragraph starting with "If you have a recent version of Visual Studio". I don't have Visual Studio, I only have VS Code, so I would have thought that paragraph was not applicable to me and I would have focused on the next paragraph that was applicable to me that starts with "You can also install the Desktop development with C++ workload without a full Visual Studio IDE installation."

    The pre-requisite step says "Install the Microsoft Visual C++ (MSVC) compiler toolset." first, but I can see how it might be easily skipped over in favor of the paragraphs. I think the true problem with this section right now is that the Installer does not behave as expected on Windows 10 anymore. The C++ workload is supposed to select a Windows SDK by default, but since the only Windows 10 option is "out of support" it doesn't appear to do that anymore. I'll see if I can rework this to emphasize the necessity of a Windows SDK being present in a way that can be found for both installation cases.

  24. gknighted commented on Apr 9, 2026

    @gknighted
    gknighted
    on Apr 9, 2026
    Author

    Bob Brown (@bobbrow) that all sounds great! One last detail I can provide in case it’s helpful is that in the VS Code terminal, the winget operation was reporting as succeeded, so I didn’t realize it was failing to install one of the packages requested. I don’t know if maybe there’s a way to get it to fail instead in that case. If so, I would have been able to give you more salient info earlier on.

  25. bobbrow commented on Apr 9, 2026

    @bobbrow
    Bob Brown (bobbrow)
    on Apr 9, 2026
    Contributor

    I linked a new PR for the walkthrough. Unfortunately, if winget isn't going to notify you about the failure to install one of the packages, I'm not sure what else we can do.

  26. gknighted commented on Apr 9, 2026

    @gknighted
    gknighted
    on Apr 9, 2026
    Author

    I linked a new PR for the walkthrough. Unfortunately, if winget isn't going to notify you about the failure to install one of the packages, I'm not sure what else we can do.

    You’re a rockstar! Thanks so much for everything.

  27. sean-mcmanus commented on Apr 15, 2026

    @sean-mcmanus
    Sean McManus (sean-mcmanus)
    on Apr 15, 2026
    Contributor

    gknighted Fixed with 1.32.0 pre-release (https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-cpptools/releases/tag/v1.32.0).

  28. github-actions
    locked and limited conversation to collaborators on May 24, 2026
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    Language ServicebugfixedCheck the Milestone for the release in which the fix is or will be available.tasks/build/debugAn issue relating to tasks.json (e.g. build issues)

    Type

    Bug

    Projects

    • cpptools
      Status
      Done

    Milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions