CMake: Visual Studio 15 2017 could not find any instance of Visual Studio

Question

When I am trying to install CMake I get the error:

Visual Studio 15 2017 could not find any instance of Visual Studio.

I am using Windows 7 and Visual Studio 2017. The CMakeOutput.log file writes:

The system is: Windows - 6.1.7601 - AMD64

Any ideas?

score 172 · Answer 1 · edited Nov 15 '18 at 15:12

172

I ran into the same error and performed the following steps to resolve the issue:

Open Visual Studio
Go to Tools -> Get Tools and Features
In the "Workloads" tab enable "Desktop development with C++"
Click Modify at the bottom right

These steps resulted in the "Visual C++ tools for CMake" feature being installed, but the other optional C++ features included in this workload may also helpful for what you are trying to do.

After the Visual Studio updater finishes installing try re-running the command. You may need to open a new command window.

edited Nov 15 '18 at 15:12

Teivaz

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answered Sep 27 '18 at 06:10

Matthew Orlando

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That was it. I've had most of the C++ stuff, but the "Visual C++ tools for CMake" were missing. Thank you. – Violet Giraffe Oct 13 '18 at 12:50
4

I have installed it, but still getting the error. I'm not sure but maybe it is related to uninstalled cmake 3.12 and then installed 3.13 – Gerard097 Nov 16 '18 at 04:38
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I installed Visual Studio 2019 with all those settings enabled and still getting this error. Have the latest cmake version (3.16.5), which should be fine given the recommendation for a lower version and above for cmake in the installer of VS itself. – rbaleksandar Apr 05 '20 at 16:14
In Visual Studio 2015, there is no menu Tools -> Get Tools and Features. – hobbydev Jan 17 '22 at 09:41

score 14 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 22 '19 at 08:54

In my case, I installed Visual Studio, selecting the workloads and modules that I wanted, but I ignored the request to reboot, assuming that shutting down the computer at the end of the day and restarting it the following day would suffice. I was wrong.

The following day I tried a cmake build and got the "could not find any instance of Visual Studio" error. After several attempts to resolve, I re-ran the installer, made no changes to the configuration, and clicked Modify. This time I let it reboot the computer. The reboot took a long time. After which my cmake build worked.

Israr · Answer 3 · 2022-02-01T08:59:12.927

If you have already installed the workload Desktop development with C++ and still getting the following errors while using visual studio 2022 for flutter

Generator

Visual Studio 16 2019

could not find any instance of Visual Studio.

Building Windows application...

Exception: Unable to generate build files"

Solution: Follow these steps,

Edit your_flutter_path\packages\flutter_tools\lib\src\windows\build_windows.dart, and change the constant on line 28 from Visual Studio 16 2019 to Visual Studio 17 2022
Delete flutter_tools.stamp and flutter_tools.snapshot from your_flutter_path\bin\cache\
Run flutter clean in the project

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 05 '20 at 16:02

I had the same issue "could not find any instance of Visual Studio" but with Visual Studio 2019 (Community Edition) and I just had to configure the VS160COMNTOOLS variable so that CMake correctly detects Visual Studio.

export VS160COMNTOOLS="/c/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Visual Studio/2019/Community/Common7/Tools"

(cf https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/generator/Visual%20Studio%2016%202019.html)

With Visual Studio 15 2017, the variable you need should be VS150COMNTOOLS. (cf https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/generator/Visual%20Studio%2015%202017.html)

NB: in my case, in a Travis-CI workflow, I installed Visual Studio using the commands (no need to reboot):

choco install visualstudio2019community
choco install visualstudio2019-workload-nativedesktop # required

With only the first package, CMake detection of VS2019 failed.

score 3 · Answer 5 · edited Jul 07 '23 at 04:54

I was configuring a Jenkins build node and could successfully run CMake GUI manually but command line use or builds using the CMake plugin would fail with:

Visual Studio 16 2019 could not find instance of Visual Studio.

-A x64 parameter was added with no change in result.

The problem was that CMake could not determine the Windows SDK version.

By adding CMAKE_SYSTEM_VERSION parameter CMake was then able to find Visual Studio:

-D CMAKE_SYSTEM_VERSION=10.0.18362.0

(use your windows SDK version)

Environment:
windows 10 system build: 19042
CMAKE 3.19.4
VS 2019 Professional 16.8.4
Jenkins 2.235.1

Full command line that worked:

"C:\Program Files\CMake\bin\cmake" -G "Visual Studio 16 2019" -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -A x64 -D CMAKE_SYSTEM_VERSION=10.0.18362.0

How can we determine SDK version dynamically? – Sergey Sep 23 '22 at 08:07 — Sergey, Sep 23 '22 at 08:07

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Aug 31 '21 at 20:12

When using VS 2017, be aware that this is really VS 2015, and CMake identified it as VS 2017 2022 which is not the version of VS 2017 I had, that gave me this error. So the conclusion I offer is to try different versions, specifically the 2015 one.

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Mar 14 '22 at 11:43

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I reinstalled the Visual Studio 2019(my former one is 2017 version ) with all those settings required(my cmake version is 3.23.0),and it works. So try to install different versions.

answered Mar 14 '22 at 11:43

NA-Wen

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score 1 · Answer 8 · answered May 31 '22 at 05:58

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In my case, the problem was gone after I deleted the previous cmake result directory and then ran cmake again.

answered May 31 '22 at 05:58

Chaohsiung Huang

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score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Feb 02 '19 at 06:07

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if you have installed two or more Windows 10 SDK, delete them excluding latest one.

answered Feb 02 '19 at 06:07

Guni

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score 0 · Answer 10 · edited Feb 09 '21 at 00:24

I had a similar issue where installing libzmq in my npm project was throwing the same error and that wasn't getting solved by enabling "msbuild" under "Desktop development with C++" in the Visual Studio installer.

My solution ended up being to reinstall the Windows build tools for npm with the following command.

npm install --global windows-build-tools

Note: Remember to run the command prompt (or whatever terminal you are using) as admin before running this.

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Mar 26 '21 at 02:54

If the CMake used to work with the installed Visual Studio and is broken someday, then the problem could be VS requires system reboot to complete some update.

For quick verification, rename HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\Setup\Reboot to like HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\Setup\Reboot.bak, then re-run cmake which should succeed. Don't forget to rename the registry back and reboot the system if this is the problem.

score 0 · Answer 12 · answered Jul 11 '21 at 14:37

0

In my case, I was selecting different version of visual studio in that configuration dialog box whereas I installed different version. Do select the same version.

answered Jul 11 '21 at 14:37

Aakash Shivanshu

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score 0 · Answer 13 · answered Nov 11 '21 at 09:32

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Above solutions did not solve this issue for me. After installing node.js from https://nodejs.org/en/download/ apparently a correct version of windows-build-tools was installed

answered Nov 11 '21 at 09:32

Cornelis

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If above solution is removed as answer your answer should include the key essentials to understand what was going on "back then". End of Review. – ZF007 Nov 11 '21 at 12:02

score -1 · Answer 14 · answered Nov 05 '20 at 13:14

Try downloading the windows-build-tools package.

npm install --global --production windows-build-tools --vs2015

This step should be the end-all-be-all solution to fixing node-gyp problems. For most people, that’s true. NPM has a package called windows-build-tools that should automatically install everything you need to get node-gyp working, including the Microsoft build tools, compilers, Python, and everything else required to build native Node modules on Windows.

CMake: Visual Studio 15 2017 could not find any instance of Visual Studio

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