Installing Platform Toolset v120 under Visual Studio 2015

Question

With Visual Studio 2015 trying to build a C/C++ project that needs Platform Toolsets v120.
The required platform toolsets are not getting populated:

From this stackoverflow post it sounds as if it will not be possible to do so without installing Visual Studio 2013 on the same system. Is it really true ?

If so then what is the use of the build tools hosted by Microsoft ?

Solution 1

The build tool page says that the build tool is only for VB/C#.

"Build Tools 2013 provides the essential tools for building managed applications."

The v120 MSBuild folder (C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\12.0\Bin) contains VB/C# compiler (vbc.exe, csc.exe), but it doesn't contains C++ compiler (cl.exe).

The cl.exe is located at "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\VC\bin\".

Solution 2

Your project has referred Visual Studio 2010 as toolset, but your machine doesn't have VS 2010 installed. You need to install VS 2010 (and not VS2013) on your machine.

Why don't you just compile it on VS 2015 itself? For previous versions of Windows, just use "Windows XP" toolset.

Comments

[proton]

"The required platform toolsets are not getting populated:" The main concern deals with the installation of Visual Studio. Looks like it is necessary to do so if the required platform toolsets are missing.

[proton]

Also "Win XP" toolset did not work for the mentioned project.