Is it possible to install Visual Studio in a Windows Container

Question

Is it possible to install any version of Visual Studio in a Windows Container on a Windows Server?

The motivation is to use Windows Containers for building software in continuous integration systems, so that the build environment is standardized.

Answer 1

Windows Containers do not currently include GUI apps. The limitation is on Microsoft, not on Docker.

For example try something simple like running Notepad (in Windows Server Core container). The process is launched but no GUI shows up.

Answer 2

I've recently spent a lot of time investigating this as our goal was to set up "dockerized" DevOps agents which were capable of running the VsBuild@1 pipeline task (among other things).

Generally, if you DON'T need VsBuild@1 (or some of the other tasks related to Visual Studio, like VsTest@2 or the like) then you're better of using https://hub.docker.com/_/microsoft-dotnet-framework-sdk/ as your base and call it a day; those images come with the Build Tools and VS Test agent already installed.

However it IS possible to install VS. Some notes:

• I've had issues when installing VS on top of the images mentioned above. For some reason VS silently fails to copy some files when it detects some existing tools already being in place. As such, I recommend using the https://hub.docker.com/_/microsoft-dotnet-framework-runtime/ images as a base.
• Installation must be "quiet" (since there's no GUI) and cannot request a restart.
• From what I can tell VS would usually queue up some kind of pre-build process which isn't triggered when the system isn't restarted. This can be manually triggered, however, by running %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\ngen update. Do note that with a VS installation inside Docker this WILL fail in various ways, so you'll need to find ways around this.
• Check the original DockerFile for the SDK images for some references; specifically interesting is the manual installation of .NET Framework targetting packs: https://github.com/microsoft/dotnet-framework-docker/blob/main/src/sdk/4.8.1/windowsservercore-ltsc2022/Dockerfile (Should this link ever stop working because the file is moved then it's worth taking a look at the DockerFiles in the https://github.com/microsoft/dotnet-framework-docker repo)
• Not all VS components can be installed! While I haven't nailed it down to which components are troublesome, a full VS install inside Docker will likely exceed default Docker disk space limits and / or run endlessly (soft lock as some proces will wait forever for some other installation process to finish). As such it is important to carefully curate the list of VS component IDs you wish to install using --add arguments.

Answer 3

Visual Studio seems to not be supported officially on Core Server, but I agree it would be really nice to be able to do this. Let's try:

FROM mcr.microsoft.com/windows/servercore:ltsc2019
SHELL ["powershell"]

RUN Invoke-WebRequest "https://aka.ms/vs/16/release/vs_community.exe" -OutFile "$env:TEMP\vs_community.exe" -UseBasicParsing
RUN & "$env:TEMP\vs_community.exe" --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.NetWeb --quiet --wait --norestart --noUpdateInstaller | Out-Default

RUN & 'C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Visual Studio/2017/Community/MSBuild/15.0/Bin/MSBuild.exe' /version

CMD ["powershell"]

(I'm pushing this image into lukaslansky/visualstudio-netwebworkload, use with caution.)

Output of the build is:

[...]
Microsoft (R) Build Engine version 15.3.409.57025 for .NET Framework
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

So this seems to work! You should play with those --add installator arguments to specify what components you need precisely for your build, they correspond to workloads and components you see in the GUI. See the documentation.

Answer 4

Your best bet at this point is to use Visual Studio Build Tools.

Answer 5

A way to install visual build chain in a windows container could be to use chocolatey package visualstudio2017buildtools.

Starting Dockerfile with something like :

FROM microsoft/windowsservercore
RUN powershell.exe -NoProfile -InputFormat None -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SETX PATH "%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin" 
RUN choco install -y  visualstudio2017buildtools --package-parameters "--add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.VCTools --installPath C:\BuildTools" || IF "%ERRORLEVEL%"=="3010" EXIT 0      
RUN call "C:\BuildTools\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvars64.bat"

Answer 6

Just for the record MS is not planning support VS inside containers, the best alternative that you have is MsBuild. Some months ago was possible but with the latest version from VS is not possible. Source: vsts-agents