How can I use PowerShell with the Visual Studio Command Prompt?

Stealing liberally from blog post Replace Visual Studio Command Prompt with PowerShell, I was able to get this to work. I added the following to my profile.ps1 file and all is well with the world.

pushd 'c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC'cmd /c "vcvarsall.bat&set" |foreach {  if ($_ -match "=") {    $v = $_.split("="); set-item -force -path "ENV:\$($v[0])"  -value "$($v[1])"  }}popdwrite-host "`nVisual Studio 2010 Command Prompt variables set." -ForegroundColor Yellow

This has worked well for years - until Visual Studio 2015. vcvarsall.bat no longer exists. Instead, you can use the vsvars32.bat file, which is located in the Common7\Tools folder.

pushd 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\Tools'    cmd /c "vsvars32.bat&set" |foreach {  if ($_ -match "=") {    $v = $_.split("="); set-item -force -path "ENV:\$($v[0])"  -value "$($v[1])"  }}popdwrite-host "`nVisual Studio 2015 Command Prompt variables set." -ForegroundColor Yellow

Things have changed yet again for Visual Studio 2017. vsvars32.bat appears to have been dropped in favor of VsDevCmd.bat. The exact path may vary depending on which edition of Visual Studio 2017 you're using.

pushd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\Common7\Tools"cmd /c "VsDevCmd.bat&set" |foreach {  if ($_ -match "=") {    $v = $_.split("="); set-item -force -path "ENV:\$($v[0])"  -value "$($v[1])"  }}popdWrite-Host "`nVisual Studio 2017 Command Prompt variables set." -ForegroundColor Yellow

You can also make the split create just two items to avoid breaking values including the equal sign, which is also the separator of the environment variable name and the value:

$v = $_.split("=", 2); set-item -force -path "ENV:\$($v[0])"  -value 

The simplest option is to run the VS 2010 command prompt and then start PowerShell.exe. If you really want to do this from your "home" PowerShell prompt, the approach you show is the way to go. I use a script that Lee Holmes wrote a while back:

<#.SYNOPSIS   Invokes the specified batch file and retains any environment variable changes   it makes..DESCRIPTION   Invoke the specified batch file (and parameters), but also propagate any   environment variable changes back to the PowerShell environment that   called it..PARAMETER Path   Path to a .bat or .cmd file..PARAMETER Parameters   Parameters to pass to the batch file..EXAMPLE   C:\PS> Invoke-BatchFile "$env:VS90COMNTOOLS\..\..\vc\vcvarsall.bat"   Invokes the vcvarsall.bat file to set up a 32-bit dev environment.  All   environment variable changes it makes will be propagated to the current   PowerShell session..EXAMPLE   C:\PS> Invoke-BatchFile "$env:VS90COMNTOOLS\..\..\vc\vcvarsall.bat" amd64   Invokes the vcvarsall.bat file to set up a 64-bit dev environment.  All   environment variable changes it makes will be propagated to the current   PowerShell session..NOTES   Author: Lee Holmes#>

function Invoke-BatchFile{   param([string]$Path, [string]$Parameters)   $tempFile = [IO.Path]::GetTempFileName()   ## Store the output of cmd.exe.  We also ask cmd.exe to output   ## the environment table after the batch file completes   cmd.exe /c " `"$Path`" $Parameters && set > `"$tempFile`" "   ## Go through the environment variables in the temp file.   ## For each of them, set the variable in our local environment.   Get-Content $tempFile | Foreach-Object {       if ($_ -match "^(.*?)=(.*)$")       {           Set-Content "env:\$($matches[1])" $matches[2]       }   }   Remove-Item $tempFile}

Note: this function will be available in the PowerShell Community Extensions 2.0 module-based release coming soon.

I found a simple method here: modify the shortcut.

The original shortcut is something like this:

%comspec% /k ""C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\Tools\VsDevCmd.bat""

Add & powershell before the last quote, like this:

%comspec% /k ""C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\Tools\VsDevCmd.bat" & powershell"

If you want to make it look more like PowerShell, go to the Colors tab of the shortcut properties and set the Red, Green and Blue values to 1, 36 and 86 respectively.