Visual Studio 2019: build C++ from command line with vcvars64.bat doesn't work anymore

Question

In order to compile an app with cl cpp compiler in the command line on previous versions of Visual studio I ran the vcvars64.bat script and then compiler worked as expected.

Answer 1

In my visual studio 2019 installation stddef.h is found in C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\include\10.0.17763.0\ucrt. vcvars.bat should be adding this path to the INCLUDE environment variable.

Running the following might provide some hints:

set VSCMD_DEBUG=3
vcvars64.bat > out.txt

In my installation searching out.txt for call :GetWin10SdkDir comes to the section where the bat file is searching for a SDK directory. Hopefully there will be some error messages in there somewhere.

For reference these are the additional environment variables set by a working call to vcvars64.bat on my machine:

CommandPromptType=Native
DevEnvDir=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\Common7\IDE\
ExtensionSdkDir=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Kits\10\ExtensionSDKs
Framework40Version=v4.0
FrameworkDir=C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\
FrameworkDIR64=C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework64
FrameworkVersion=v4.0.30319
FrameworkVersion64=v4.0.30319
HTMLHelpDir=C:\Program Files (x86)\HTML Help Workshop
INCLUDE=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.24.28314\ATLMFC\include;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.24.28314\include;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\NETFXSDK\4.8\include\um;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\include\10.0.17763.0\ucrt;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\include\10.0.17763.0\shared;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\include\10.0.17763.0\um;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\include\10.0.17763.0\winrt;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\include\10.0.17763.0\cppwinrt
LIB=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.24.28314\ATLMFC\lib\x64;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.24.28314\lib\x64;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\NETFXSDK\4.8\lib\um\x64;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\lib\10.0.17763.0\ucrt\x64;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\lib\10.0.17763.0\um\x64;
LIBPATH=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.24.28314\ATLMFC\lib\x64;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.24.28314\lib\x64;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.24.28314\lib\x86\store\references;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\UnionMetadata\10.0.17763.0;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\References\10.0.17763.0;C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319;
NETFXSDKDir=C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\NETFXSDK\4.8\
Path=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.24.28314\bin\HostX64\x64;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\Common7\IDE\VC\VCPackages;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TestWindow;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TeamFoundation\Team Explorer;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\MSBuild\Current\bin\Roslyn;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\Team Tools\Performance Tools\x64;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\Team Tools\Performance Tools;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\VS15Preview\Common\VSPerfCollectionTools\vs2019\\x64;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\VS15Preview\Common\VSPerfCollectionTools\vs2019\;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v10.0A\bin\NETFX 4.8 Tools\x64\;C:\Program Files (x86)\HTML Help Workshop;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\10.0.17763.0\x64;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\x64;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\\MSBuild\Current\Bin;C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\Common7\IDE\;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\Common7\Tools\;
Platform=x64
UCRTVersion=10.0.17763.0
UniversalCRTSdkDir=C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\
VCIDEInstallDir=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\Common7\IDE\VC\
VCINSTALLDIR=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\VC\
VCToolsInstallDir=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.24.28314\
VCToolsRedistDir=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\VC\Redist\MSVC\14.24.28127\
VCToolsVersion=14.24.28314
VisualStudioVersion=16.0
VS160COMNTOOLS=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\Common7\Tools\
VSCMD_ARG_app_plat=Desktop
VSCMD_ARG_HOST_ARCH=x64
VSCMD_ARG_TGT_ARCH=x64
VSCMD_VER=16.4.2
VSINSTALLDIR=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Professional\
WindowsLibPath=C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\UnionMetadata\10.0.17763.0;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\References\10.0.17763.0
WindowsSdkBinPath=C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\
WindowsSdkDir=C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\
WindowsSDKLibVersion=10.0.17763.0\
WindowsSdkVerBinPath=C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\10.0.17763.0\
WindowsSDKVersion=10.0.17763.0\
WindowsSDK_ExecutablePath_x64=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v10.0A\bin\NETFX 4.8 Tools\x64\
WindowsSDK_ExecutablePath_x86=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v10.0A\bin\NETFX 4.8 Tools\
__DOTNET_ADD_64BIT=1
__DOTNET_PREFERRED_BITNESS=64

If all else fails a re-install of visual studio is likely to fix the issue.