vs-offline-download

Small utility to download Visual Studio 2019 layout files.

The Problem

The Visual Studio 2019 Installer can, in fact, create a offline installation, but the behavior of the installer is not suitable for very slow internet collection.

• It does not retries partial downloads
• Uses several parallel download threads

Besides that, it is a Windows only tool, requiring a dedicaded Windows (Deskptop or Server) in order to be able to update the VS2019 layout

The solution (partial)

This is a multiplatform tool written in python >= 3.6, that allows to download most of the layout files.

• Only uses one download thread
• Each file download is retried 10 times
• After the download is completed the files are checked against its declared sha256sum
• The partially downloaded files are resumed once the tool is re executed
• It has a cleanup option that after the download part removes all the old components

Whats missing

• Individual payloads or components selections
• Allow to select another VS language ...

How to use this tool

1. Clone this repo to a local filesystem

   git clone https://github.com/ypupo2002/vs-offline-download.git 
   

2. Install the required python dependencies

   pip3 install -r requirements.txt
   

3. Execute the tool:

   pyhton3 main.py ....arguments....
   

   Arguments:

   -p : [Optional] Specifies the product version to download, allowed values: Community, Professional, Enterprise

   -v : [Optional] Specifies the product version number to download, allowed values: 16 (2019), 17 (2022), ...

   -w : [Optional] Uses the preview channel for the specied version

   -c : [Optional] Performs a cleanup of old files after the download

   -l : [Required] Specifies the location of the layout

After the tool execution and before the use of the VS2019 offline installer it is required to execute a final step: Download the corresponding VS2019 installer (community, Professional or Enterprise) and perform a layout operation:

{installer}.exe --layout "<layout path>" -lang en-US

This step must be performed on a Windows machine, and it should download a few missing files (not a lot of MBs)