A standalone tool for installing the MSVC toolchain and Windows SDK without Visual Studio.

This is a Rust port of the original Zig implementation.

The Visual Studio Installer manages thousands of components, modifies the registry, and can take hours to configure. msvcup treats the toolchain as a versioned asset rather than global system state. The build environment is defined by code, not a GUI.

• Fast: Runs in milliseconds when already installed. Put it at the start of every build script.
• Reproducible: Lock file ensures everyone gets the same toolchain.
• Isolated: Every package is installed to its own versioned directory. No registry modifications. No conflicts.
• Cross-compilation: Target x64, arm64, or x86 out of the box.
• Minimal: Download only what's needed to get a working native toolchain/SDK.

cargo install msvcup

git clone https://github.com/wolfv/msvcup
cd msvcup
cargo install --path .

Install the toolchain and an SDK:

> msvcup install --lock-file msvcup.lock --manifest-update daily msvc-14.44.17.14 sdk-10.0.22621.7

All packages are installed to C:\msvcup so this would create the following directories:

• C:\msvcup\msvc-14.44.17.14 and
• C:\msvcup\sdk-10.0.22621.7

You can query the latest packages/versions using msvcup list.

Each package includes a vcvars script for each target architecture:

• vcvars-x64.bat
• vcvars-arm64.bat
• vcvars-x86.bat
• vcvars-arm.bat

These scripts add extra environment variables like a "Visual Studio Command Prompt" would.

msvcup can also create an "automatic environment" directory which enables using the toolchain/sdk outside a special command prompt, e.g.

> msvcup autoenv --target-cpu x64 --out-dir autoenv-x64 msvc-14.44.17.14 sdk-10.0.22621.7

This generates a directory with wrapper executables (cl.exe, link.exe, etc) that can be invoked in a normal command prompt along with toolchain files for CMake/Zig.

• Lock file: All components and URLs are saved before install, enabling reproducible builds via source control.
• Install metadata: Every installed file is tracked in <package>/install. This allows msvcup to detect file conflicts and allows the user to query which component(s) installed which files.
• Download cache: Packages are cached in C:\msvcup\cache. Failed installs can be retried without network access.

BSD-3-Clause

Special thanks to Mārtiņš Možeiko (@mmozeiko) for his original Python MSVC installer, which served as a vital reference for this project.