could not find any instance of Visual Studio

Question

Goal: I intend to install ROS2 Dashing on Windows. I am building from source following the instructions in https://index.ros.org/doc/ros2/Installation/Dashing/Windows-Development-Setup/.

Issue: When running colcon build --merge-install from the Visual Studio Developer Command Prompt each package starts to be built. However, it fails on the same error:

--- stderr: <package>
CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:2 (project):
  Generator

    Visual Studio 16 2019

  could not find any instance of Visual Studio.

I have added an AMENT_IGNORE file to each package to see if the problem is with an individual package, but the error is occuring in every package.

Thank you in advance for any assistance.

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Originally posted by Tav_PG on ROS Answers with karma: 28 on 2019-10-02

Post score: 0

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Original comments

Comment by cangyin on 2019-12-29:
I am also struggling on similar problem, hope this will help: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51668676/cmake-visual-studio-15-2017-could-not-find-any-instance-of-visual-studio

Answer 1

Apology: Firstly I would like to apologise, I'm under some pressure to get ROS2 installed on Windows, and I am posting some issues that I resolve soon after posting them! (sorry) However, more information for the community is better, just in case someone else runs into the same issue.

Appreciation: Thank you cangyin for your input. You found the solution.

Cause: When following the https://index.ros.org/doc/ros2/Installation/Dashing/Windows-Install-Binary/ instructions at the "Install Visual Studio" section it states,

Make sure that no C++ CMake tools are installed by unselecting them in the list of components to be installed.

I was slightly confused that the accompanying screenshot in the instructions shows 'Visual C++ tools for CMake' checked. So at this point I thought it would be 'safer' :-) to uncheck all the optional components. This was my downfall.

Solution:

[1] Open Visual Studio

[2] On the menu go to Tools > Get Tools and Features

[3] Make sure the "Desktop development with C++" tab is enabled (checked) under the "Workloads" section

[4] In the right side panel

Thanks again to cangyin

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Originally posted by Tav_PG with karma: 28 on 2020-01-05

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 1