actions-marketplace-validations/Setup Visual C++ Development Environment

Configure the Visual C++ development environment by running vcvarsall.bat.

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Maintenance Recency: Activelast commit Apr 6, 2026
License: MIT

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uses: actions-marketplace-validations/mlocati_setup-msvc@b0d9cacc37bca3008de7e4c3118298c307b9a96e # no releases — HEAD as of 2026-07-13

tags can be moved; commit SHAs can't. why a SHA?

Inputs

name	description	required	default
vs-version	The Visual Studio version (e.g. 'latest', '2022', '17'), if not specified, the latest installed Visual Studio version will be used	no	latest
architecture	The architecture for the Visual Studio tools ('x86', 'x64', 'x86_x64', 'x86_arm', 'x86_arm64', 'x64_x86', 'x64_arm', 'x64_arm64') - if not specified, the action will try to determine it based on the system architecture	no	—
platform-type	The platform type for the Visual Studio tools ('store', 'uwp', or empty for classic desktop)	no	desktop
windows-sdk-version	The Windows SDK version to use (e.g. '10.0.26100.0', '8.1') - if not specified, the action will try to determine it based on the installed SDKs	no	—
toolset-version	The Visual Studio toolset version to use (e.g. '14', '14.44', '14.44.35207') - if not specified, the latest installed toolset version will be used	no	—
spectre-mode	Whether to enable Spectre mitigation (true or false)	no	false
canonicalize-paths	If true, verifies if paths in environment variables exist, resolves symbolic links, and normalizes casing (e.g., converts 'c:\pRoGrAm fILES\Foo\' to 'C:\Program Files\Foo')	no	false
if-not-windows	What to do if the action is run on a non-Windows system ('fail' to fail the action, 'warn' to print a warning, 'ignore' to do nothing)	no	fail
update-env	Set to true to update the environment variables of subsequent steps in the job, false to not update them, or to a newline-separated list of variable names to only update a subset of them (prepend "!" to a variable name to exclude it from updating when using a list)	no	true
debug	Dump debug information	no	false

Outputs

name	description
vcvarsall-path	The path to the vcvarsall.bat file used for inspection - e.g. C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvarsall.bat
path	The additional paths added to the PATH environment variable by vcvarsall.bat (semicolon-separated)
include	The INCLUDE environment variable set by vcvarsall.bat (semicolon-separated)
lib	The LIB environment variable set by vcvarsall.bat (semicolon-separated)
libpath	The LIBPATH environment variable set by vcvarsall.bat (semicolon-separated)
vc-installdir	The root directory of Visual C++ - e.g. C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\VC\
vs-installdir	The root directory of Visual Studio - e.g. C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\
vs-version	The version of Visual Studio - e.g. 17.0
vctools-installdir	The root directory of the Visual C++ tools - e.g. C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.44.35207\
vctools-version	The version of the Visual C++ tools - e.g. 14.44.35207
windows-sdk-dir	The root directory of the Windows SDK - e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\
windows-sdk-version	The version of the Windows SDK - e.g. 10.0.26100.0\
windows-sdk-lib-version	The version of the Windows SDK libraries - e.g. 10.0.26100.0\
ucrt-version	The version of the Universal C Runtime - e.g. 10.0.26100.0
platform	The target platform for the Visual Studio tools - e.g. x64
vcmd-arg-host-arch	The architecture of the system that runs the Visual Studio tools - e.g. x64
vcmd-arg-tgt-arch	The architecture of the target platform - e.g. x64
all	All the environment variables set by vcvarsall.bat, in JSON format