Installing Visual Studio Build Tools on Windows Container does not installs cl.exe

Question

new to the containers and even newer to windows containers (!!!!)

I am aiming to use cl.exe to compile cpp programs on a windows container.

I am experiencing an issue installing Visual Studio Build Tools on a container with base image mcr.microsoft.com/windows/servercore:ltsc2019 or mcr.microsoft.com/windows/servercore:ltsc2022

I believe the cl.exe is integrated on the VCTools (Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.VCTools)

I order to check if the cl.exe was installed, I tried a local installation on my pc. I usually find cl.exe at the following location.

C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio\\2022\\BuildTools\\VC\\Tools\\MSVC\\14.29.30133\\VC\\Tools\\MSVC\\14.38.33130\\bin\\Hostx64\\x64\\

When performing the installation on the container on this same location, I only get the Auxiliary folder

C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio\\2022\\BuildTools\\VC\\Tools\\MSVC\\14.29.30133\\VC\\Tools\\MSVC\\14.38.33130\\Auxiliary

And not "bin" folder

I am building on a WindowsServerCore2022 I am building using DockerCe

So I am expecting to install cl.exe usually located on :

C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio\\2022\\BuildTools\\VC\\Tools\\MSVC\\14.29.30133\\VC\\Tools\\MSVC\\14.38.33130\\bin\\Hostx64\\x64\\

I was greatly inspired on : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/install/build-tools-container?view=vs-2019

Dockerfile

Thank you!

Answer 1

I got to solve it, I think I misunderstood what was installed by using:

--add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.VCTools

I thought the Workload installed all the components too as per :

Components included by this workload

On Workload's documentation.

To solve this issue I had to install the component explicitly. Specifically, I required to add:

--add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Tools.x86.x64