Comments on: Using Enter-VsDevShell in PowerShell Consoles

By: Erin

Erin — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 21:15:04 +0000

In reply to François. Unfortunately, Microsoft still doesn't have any documentation for these options!

By: François

François — Sat, 12 Nov 2022 22:13:45 +0000

Useful article, thanks.
Option -StartInPath lets you specify a working directory where you’ll be taken once the shell starts up. If you specify none you’ll be taken to wherever you defined your default project location in VS. You can disable this behaviour entirely by using option -SkipAutomaticLocation.
Option -DevCmdArguments lets you specify options to pass along to the vsdevcmd.bat script which ends up being run at some point.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 14 Mar 2021 14:04:27 +0000

In reply to Felix Gündling. I have to thank you so much for: -DevCmdArguments “-arch=amd64″ Been looking for this for days

By: Yves Grasland

Yves Grasland — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 12:11:31 +0000

This is extremely interesting. I’m trying to get an automated build chain working based on CMake, which was previously unable to find any compiler or link path without lots of horrible hacking of the infamous PATH variable ; I knew about the VS dev console, but it looked like a black box, difficult to integrate in another tool. This insight you provide on the inner workings of this console and the way to use it seems therefore extremely valuable. Thanks!

By: Kelly Adams

Kelly Adams — Sat, 27 Jun 2020 03:02:30 +0000

In reply to Ralph. You are welcome!

By: Ralph

Ralph — Sat, 27 Jun 2020 02:47:33 +0000

Kelly, thank you immensely for this post. After fighting with the “The input line is too long. The syntax of the command is incorrect.” error while attempting to setup the visual studio env variables the old fashioned way I am relieved to have found your post. Thank you for sharing this!

By: Felix Gündling

Felix Gündling — Sun, 12 Apr 2020 10:36:31 +0000

Regarding the DevCmdArguments:

These are pretty handy to get the 64-bit shell:
-DevCmdArguments “-arch=amd64″

You can let vswhere.exe find the DevShell.dll for you if you like:
$devShell = &”C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere.exe” -latest -find **\Microsoft.VisualStudio.DevShell.dll
Import-Module $devShell

By: Kelly Adams

Kelly Adams — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 14:30:30 +0000

In reply to PBC. Microsoft loves to move things around, I have updated the repo and the code samples. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!

By: PBC

PBC — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 01:11:06 +0000

As of 16.3 the path has changed you need to remove vsdevshell
Import-Module (Join-Path $installPath “Common7\Tools\Microsoft.VisualStudio.DevShell.dll”)