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Jul 4, 2025
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improve msvc versions description #4150

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improve msvc versions description
memsharded Jul 1, 2025
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Update reference/config_files/settings.rst
AbrilRBS Jul 1, 2025
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20 changes: 11 additions & 9 deletions reference/config_files/settings.rst
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Expand Up @@ -209,19 +209,22 @@ Some notes about different compilers:
msvc
++++

- It uses the compiler version, that is 190 (19.0), 191 (19.1), etc, instead of the Visual Studio IDE (15, 16, etc).
- It is only used by the new build integrations in :ref:`conan_tools_cmake` and :ref:`conan_tools_microsoft`,
but not the previous ones.
The ``msvc`` compiler setting uses the actual ``cl.exe`` compiler version, that is 190 (19.0), 191 (19.1), etc, instead of the Visual Studio IDE version(15, 16, etc).

When using the ``msvc`` compiler, the Visual Studio toolset version (the actual ``vcvars`` activation
and ``MSBuild`` location) will be defined by the default provided by that compiler version:

- ``msvc`` compiler version '190': Visual Studio 14 2015
- ``msvc`` compiler version '191': Visual Studio 15 2017
- ``msvc`` compiler version '192': Visual Studio 16 2019
- ``msvc`` compiler version '193': Visual Studio 17 2022
- ``msvc`` compiler version '190': Visual Studio 14 2015 (toolset v140)
- ``msvc`` compiler version '191': Visual Studio 15 2017 (toolset v141)
- ``msvc`` compiler version '192': Visual Studio 16 2019 (toolset v142)
- ``msvc`` compiler version '193': Visual Studio 17 2022 (toolset v143, compiler versions up to 19.39, toolset version 14.3X)
- ``msvc`` compiler version '194': Visual Studio 17 2022 (toolset v143, compiler versions from 19.40, toolset version 14.4X, Visual Studio update 17.10)

This can be configured in your profiles with the ``tools.microsoft.msbuild:vs_version`` configuration:
Note that both ``compiler.version=193`` and ``compiler.version=194`` map to the ``v143`` toolset, but to different toolset versions ``14.3X``
and ``14.4X``, due to the versioning scheme change done from Visual Studio update 17.10 that introduced compiler version 19.40 and toolset version 14.40
while keeping the toolset ``v143`` nomenclature.

If you want to explicitly force a specific Visual Studio IDE version, you can do it with the ``tools.microsoft.msbuild:vs_version`` configuration:

.. code-block:: text

Expand All @@ -247,7 +250,6 @@ control is desired, you can just add the ``update`` part to your profiles:
compiler.version=191
compiler.update=3


This will be equivalent to the full version ``1913 (19.13)``. If even further details are desired, you could even add your own digits
to the ``update`` subsetting in ``settings.yml``.

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