vcv

Fast Visual Studio environment setup. ~50x faster than vcvars64.bat.

Why?

Microsoft's vcvars64.bat is slow because it:

• Spawns PowerShell for telemetry
• Runs 15+ batch files sequentially
• Queries registry multiple times
• Searches directories with dir commands

This tool does the same job with:

• Single vswhere.exe call (~20ms)
• Direct registry lookups
• Zero telemetry
• Native compiled binary

Installation

# Build from source
cargo build --release
copy target\release\vcv.exe C:\bin\

Usage

PowerShell

# Apply environment (auto-detect shell)
vcv | iex

# Quiet mode
vcv -q | iex

# Add to $PROFILE
function vcvars { vcv @args | iex }

CMD

vcv -f cmd > vcenv.bat && vcenv.bat

:: Or inline
for /f "delims=" %i in ('vcv -f cmd') do @%i

Bash / MSYS2

eval $(vcv -f sh)

JSON (for tools)

vcv -f json -q

Options

-a, --arch      Target architecture: x64 (default), x86, arm64
-s, --host      Host architecture: x64 (default), x86, arm64
-f, --format    Output format: auto (default), ps, cmd, sh, json
-v, --vs        VS version year: 2017, 2019, 2022
-q, --quiet     Suppress info messages
--no-validate   Skip cl.exe validation
-h, --help      Print help

Examples

# x64 native (default)
vcv | iex

# x86 target
vcv -a x86 | iex

# Cross-compile for ARM64
vcv -a arm64 | iex

# Use specific VS version
vcv -v 2019 | iex

# JSON for parsing
vcv -f json | ConvertFrom-Json

Output

Note: All paths are prepended (added to the beginning), not replaced. Your existing PATH, INCLUDE, etc. remain intact - VS tools just get priority.

Sets these environment variables:

License

MIT