Visual Studio Version History With Toolset Paths

Product name Codename Version Number Supported .NET Frameworks Supported .NET / CORE Versions Release date
Visual Studio 97 Boston 5 N/A N/A Feb-97
Visual Studio 6.0 Aspen 6 N/A N/A Jun-98
Visual Studio 2002 Rainier 7 1 N/A 13-Feb-02
Visual Studio 2003 Everett 7.1 1.1 N/A 24-Apr-03
Visual Studio 2005 Whidbey 8 2.0, 3.0 N/A 7-Nov-05
Visual Studio 2008 Orcas 9 2.0, 3.0, 3.5 N/A 19-Nov-07
Visual Studio 2010 Dev10, Rosario 10 2.0 – 4.0 N/A 12-Apr-10
Visual Studio 2012 Dev11 11 2.0 – 4.5.2 N/A 12-Sep-12
Visual Studio 2013 Dev12 12 2.0 – 4.5.2 N/A 17-Oct-13
Visual Studio 2015 Dev14 14 2.0 – 4.6 1 20-Jul-15
Visual Studio 2017 Dev15 15 3.5 – 4.7 1.0-1.1, 2.0 7-Mar-17
Visual Studio 2019 Unknown 16 TBA TBA TBA

Product name .NET Toolset Path
Visual Studio 2005   Windows installation pathMicrosoft.NetFrameworkv2.0.50727
Visual Studio 2008 .NET 3.5 Windows installation pathMicrosoft.NETFrameworkv3.5
Visual Studio 2010 .NET 4.0 Windows installation pathMicrosoft.NETFrameworkv4.0.30319
Visual Studio 2012 .NET 4.5 Windows installation pathMicrosoft.NETFrameworkv4.0.30319
Visual Studio 2013 .NET 4.5.1 %ProgramFiles%MSBuild12.0bin
Visual Studio 2015 14 %ProgramFiles%MSBuild14.0bin
Visual Studio 2017 15 %ProgramFiles%MSBuild15.0bin
Visual Studio 2019 TBA TBA

Run Visual Studio Command Tools Within Powershell

Visual Studio command tools (ie, msbuild, mstest, dotnet) can be directly executed from Powershell and open in a new window.

Likewise, the reverse can also occur.  You can run Powershell from within the Visual Studio tools.
  1. Depending on your version of Visual Studio, locate the path to the common tools.  For example, if you decided to set an environment variable for this path, it could be something like:
    1. VS150COMNTOOLS=C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Visual Studio2017CommunityCommon7Tools
    2. VS140COMNTOOLS=C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0Common7Tools
    3. VS120COMNTOOLS=C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0Common7Tools
    4. VS110COMNTOOLS=C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0Common7Tools
  2. At this point,  you can open the tool by opening Run –> cmd.exe /k “”%VS150COMNTOOLS%VsDevCmd.bat” & powershell”
  3. At this point, a Powershell prompt will open so that you can directly run msbuild, mstest, etc.