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Visual Studio Installer

There are many packages in Visual studio that you can install that support multiple languages, new syntactical features, and updates. Many of the packages are crucial to courses taught here at Lane, and they all can be installed using the Visual Studio Installer.

Typical packages and components used here at Lane include:
- .NET desktop development (mainly for windows C# forms)
- ASP.NET

Accessing VS Installer

There are a couple ways to access the installer, but a common way is through the Visual Studio interface. To open VS Installer in the interface:
- Open Visual Studio
- click on the 'Tools' tab in the toolbar.
- Select 'Get Tools and Features…'

You should see the VS Installer interface. Here, you will see a few different tabs: Workloads, Individual Components, Language Packs, and Installation Locations. If your installer needs to update, you will need to update it before you can install or update any packages.

Breakdown of the Different tabs

Workloads

This tab includes groups of packages and components that are generally used in an area of application development. These packages include the '.NET desktop development', and the 'ASP.NET and web development' bundles. Typically, students will have downloaded the .Net package during installation of Visual Studio, and any other packages that are currently installed will have a checkbox indicating so.

Individual Components

This tab lists different components that are available for installation. Most likely, you won't have to download singular components for your assignments. Unless you are instructed to, or if you use visual studio for extra-curricular programming, I'd suggest not messing with it. If you do, research the components to be sure it meets your needs.

Language packs

This tab is simply a package that translates the UI to a selected language - not to be confused with programming languages. Unless there is a reason, such as English not being your first language, there isn't much reason to utilize this tab.

Installation Location

This tab allows you to change the default path for the various downloads. It is not a necessary step in most cases to change the default paths, so unless one is found, I wouldn't recommend messing with these.

The main tab we'll be using is the workloads tab to install the needed packages. You won't need to use another tab unless instructed.

Packages you may need

Installing New Packages

In order to download a package or component, you just need to click the checkbox located at the top right corner of the package you want to download, then select modify at the bottom right of the Visual Studio Installer.
You may notice the installation details on the right-hand side when you select a package. This will give you a list of all the individual components it will download that is part of the workload package. What it downloads by default should be sufficient.

What you need

Most of everything you'll need as a student is located under the workloads tab. The packages are as follows:
For the students in C#, download the package “.NET desktop development”, under the “Windows” group.
For students in ASP.NET, download the package “ASP.NET and web development”, under the “Web & Cloud” group.
And of course, be sure you have the disc space for the download and installation.

Other packages

You may think about using Visual Studio for other programming languages, or you might be from a class that uses another language. Here are a few packages that may be useful based on your field of study:

For C++ Development and Game Design

“Desktop development for C++”, under the “Windows” group.
“Game development with Unity”, under the “Mobile & Gaming” group.

For Python development

“Python development”, under the “Web and Cloud” group.

For JavaScript

“ASP.NET and Web development”, under the “Web and Cloud” group (this package contains support for JavaScript).
“Node.js development”, under the “Web and Cloud” group.

programming/vspackages.txt · Last modified: 2019/05/08 21:30 by ramosam