Starting visual studio from command prompt

Question

I have 3 different versions of Visual Studio installed on my machine, VS2002, VS2008, VS2005,

How do I start a particular version of Visual Studio using command prompt.

devenv.exe opens latest visual studio. What should I do if I want to open VS2003

using command prompt.

Answer 1

Use devenv.exe for the specific version of Visual Studio. There will be one located in the Common7\IDE folder of the install. Here are the directories as I remember for the various versions.

• 2008: %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Ide\devenv.exe
• 2005: %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft visual Studio 8\Common7\Ide\devenv.exe

Answer 2

use an abolute path i.e: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe

Answer 3

You have to use the path to distinguish them. For instance here is the VS2005 command on my laptop:

    "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe"

Here's another tip: You can figure out how to run various windows apps from the command line by finding them in the Windows Start Menu, right-clicking on the icon, select properties, and then on the Shortcut tab, look at the Target textbox. Copy that text out and usually you can use it at a console command line.

Answer 4

Sara Ford has some tips on various command line switches here

search for devenv

Answer 5

You can also use the "Visual Studio 2005 Command Prompt" and "Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt" to load a version-specific command shell environment, and then run 'devenv'. This is typically found under Start->Programs->Visual Studio ->Visual Studio Tools

If you can't or don't want to access it via the Start menu, you can also "load" the VS-version specific environment in a normal command shell using the following (for VS 2008, with a default install path): (note: change x86 as appropriate for your platform)

(32 bit) %comspec% /k ""C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\vcvarsall.bat"" x86
(64 bit) %comspec% /k ""C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\vcvarsall.bat"" x86

or for VS 2008 (with default install path):

(32 bit) %comspec% /k ""C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat"" x86
(64 bit) %comspec% /k ""C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat"" x86

Each sets the environment so if you then subsequently execute 'devenv' it'll load the correxct version.