1740167 - Windows build instructions out of date - VS Community Edition 2019 no longer available

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox Build System :: General, defect)

Description

[Jonathan Watt [:jwatt]]

https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/setup/windows_build.html#install-visual-studio

The instructions say to install the Community edition of Visual Studio 2019. However, the MS page that's linked to now only makes VS 2022 available.

Comment 1

[Jonathan Watt [:jwatt]]

The build completes, runs and seems to function after installing VS Community 2022 with the following two items from the "Individual components" tab. (These versions of the components were selected by default after selecting the 'Desktop development with C++' and 'Game development with C++' workloads, as per our docs.)

• Windows 10 SDK (10.0.19041.0)
• C++ ATL for latest v143 build tools (x86 & x64)

The other available versions for those components were:

• Windows 10 SDK (10.0.18362.0)
• Windows 10 SDK (10.0.20348.0)
• Windows 11 SDK (10.0.22000.0)
• C++ ATL for v141 build tools (x86 & x64)
• C++ v14.29 (16.11) ATL for v142 build tools (x86 & x64)
• C++ v14.30 (17.0) ATL for v143 build tools (x86 & x64)

So to be clear, the versions of these components mentioned in our build documentation are not available in VS Community 2022.

Comment 2

[Mitchell Hentges [:mhentges] 🦀]

FWIW, it looks we can still download Visual Studio 2019 from here.
However, I'm interested in bumping our dependency versions - look at these release notes, I'm sure we'll want to leverage some of the new goodies at some point in the future.

There's risk of breakage here, but I'm thinking that we can do the following:

1. Change from recommending that users install all of VS to just install VS build tools
2. Bump recommendation from 2019 -> 2022
3. Bump components that should be selected (up to 10.0.22000.0, since its issues have been resolved, I believe)
4. Add a temporary "note" to the docs saying "we've recently bumped the Windows tooling versions, if you run into issues report a bug/ask in #build, and the solution might be to downgrade to <link to 2019>".

Comment 3

[Mitchell Hentges [:mhentges] 🦀]

Two things to note after the above comment:

• The Windows SDK 10.0.19041 is selected by default, so until we need a newer one, I think recommending the default one is acceptable
• If we move the "build tools", there's no option for "Game Development with C++". However, I'm able to do a full build despite not having it - perhaps it's not needed anymore? Its recommendation within the docs traces back to (somewhere on) MDN, so I can't get the full history.

Comment 4

[Mitchell Hentges [:mhentges] 🦀]

Attachment: Bug 1740167: Update Windows setup docs to use VS 2022

• Recommend the Build Tools over the full Community IDE install
• Bump Windows 10 SDK, C++ ATL version
• Remove "Game development with C++" workload, because it doesn't seem
  to be required anymore - I'm leaning on review and natural
  developer-testing to confirm this assumption.

Comment 5

[Jonathan Watt [:jwatt]]

(In reply to Mitchell Hentges [:mhentges] 🦀 from comment #4)

• Remove "Game development with C++" workload, because it doesn't seem
  to be required anymore

Bas, perhaps you know the history there, or can loop in someone who might?

Comment 6

[Mitchell Hentges [:mhentges] 🦀]

I'm going to land this patch since it's been sitting for a bit, but we can make adjustments if Bas has recommendations 👍

Comment 7

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/3ad3fce93f88
Update Windows setup docs to use VS 2022 r=glandium

Comment 8

[Cristina Cozmuta (:CrissCozmuta)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/3ad3fce93f88

Comment 9

[Bas Schouten (:bas.schouten)]

(In reply to Jonathan Watt [:jwatt] from comment #5)

(In reply to Mitchell Hentges [:mhentges] 🦀 from comment #4)

• Remove "Game development with C++" workload, because it doesn't seem
  to be required anymore

Bas, perhaps you know the history there, or can loop in someone who might?

Yes, that hasn't been used for years, that was because without that not all the required DirectX materials would be included, but that has not been the case for years.