Installing Build Tools for Visual Studio messes up the MSBuild path

[changov]

Version

24.12.0

Platform

Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.20348.0 x64

Subsystem

No response

What steps will reproduce the bug?

[not a core node.js issue, bit I figured it's worth sharing at least as a caveat and to help others recover]

I installed via the Windows MSI, which worked great by itself. But I also chose the option to install the VS Build Tools for C++, and that ended up messing up my system. The symptom was that attempting to do a .Net build in a 64-bit terminal would fail with:

The NuGetSdkResolver did not resolve this SDK because there was no version specified in the project or global.json

I didn't save the whole output, but the key hint from the remaining message was that it was looked for the .Net SDK under "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\BuildTools\MSBuild\Sdks\Microsoft.NET.Sdk\Sdk", and I don't have such a path.
It turned out that the Build Tools for Visual Studio 2022 installer had put a bunch of x86 paths at the front of the system PATH, including "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\BuildTools\MSBuild\Current\Bin\amd64", and that resulted in either the wrong build of msbuild.exe running (in spite of that "amd64" at the end of the path) or wrong base path to search for SDKs.

Resolved by uninstalling the Build Tools for Visual Studio 2022.

How often does it reproduce? Is there a required condition?

Select the option to install the Build Tools for Visual Studio

What is the expected behavior? Why is that the expected behavior?

.

What do you see instead?

Broken .Net SDK resolving

Additional information

No response

[MikeMcC399]

@changov

It sounds as though you already had Visual Studio installed with a .NET workload before you added the Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools through the optional installation in the Node.js 24.12.0 MSI package. Is that correct?

Installing https://nodejs.org/dist/v24.12.0/node-v24.12.0-x64.msi on Windows 11 25H2, selecting the optional "Tools for Native Modules" executes "C:\Program Files\nodejs\install_tools.bat" (with a link also Install Additional Tools for Node.js in the Windows Start Menu) which installs https://chocolatey.org/packages/visualstudio2019-workload-vctools.

I could only see it adding C:\Python314\Scripts\ & C:\Python314\ to the system Path environment variable. So I'm unable to reproduce your experience. I'm testing on Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.26200.0 x64 however and my initial setup is probably different. After installation, choco list is showing:

choco list
Chocolatey v2.5.1
chocolatey 2.5.1
chocolatey-compatibility.extension 1.0.0
chocolatey-core.extension 1.4.0
chocolatey-dotnetfx.extension 1.0.1
chocolatey-visualstudio.extension 1.13.0
chocolatey-windowsupdate.extension 1.0.5
dotnetfx 4.8.0.20220524
KB2919355 1.0.20160915
KB2919442 1.0.20160915
KB2999226 1.0.20181019
KB3033929 1.0.5
KB3035131 1.0.3
python 3.14.2
python3 3.14.2
python314 3.14.2
vcredist140 14.44.35211
vcredist2015 14.0.24215.20170201
visualstudio2022buildtools 117.14.23
visualstudio2022-workload-vctools 1.0.0
visualstudio-installer 2.0.7
20 packages installed.

Visual Studio Installer shows the following installed:

You stated

[not a core node.js issue, bit I figured it's worth sharing at least as a caveat and to help others recover]

so I'm not sure if there should be any action triggered from this issue.

If you are using Visual Studio for .NET, then it may be better to avoid using the chocolately package and instead add anything you need using Visual Studio Installer. If that causes issues with Windows Path settings, then Visual Studio support channels may be a better place to report related problems.

[changov]

Thanks for the prompt attention.
Yes, I already had VS 2022 with the C++ workload type installed. In retrospect it was a mistake to select those VS Build Tools for C++ to install with Node.js, but I wasn't sure whether that's some separate packaging of the tools that's needed as is.
Since I had the previous env.vars captured in a terminal window, I did the diff'ing and found a few paths based on "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Enterprise" were moved from the start of the PATH list to the end or even dropped. Instead, these showed up at the start:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\BuildTools\MSBuild\Current\bin\Roslyn
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v10.0A\bin\NETFX 4.8 Tools\
C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\10.0.26100.0\\x86
C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\\x86
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\BuildTools\\MSBuild\Current\Bin\amd64
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\BuildTools\Common7\IDE\
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\BuildTools\Common7\Tools\

My hunch is that the VS Tools installer ran in 32-bit mode, and that's why it installed into these folders and added them to the PATH.
Feel free to archive the issue. I just hope it helps someone figure out this nasty situation and recover from it more easily. And, of course, there's the hope that the C++ Build Tools that go with VS 2026 behave more nicely.