You may have multiple command prompts, depending on the version of Visual Studio and any additional SDKs and workloads you've installed. On the menu bar, choose Tools > Command Line > Developer Command Prompt or Developer PowerShell.Īnother way to start the shells is from the Start menu. Popular commandsįollow these steps to open Developer Command Prompt or Developer PowerShell from within Visual Studio: After opening one of these shells, you can enter the commands for different utilities without having to know where they're located. This behavior makes it convenient to run commands against the solution or its projects.īoth shells have specific environment variables set that enable you to use command-line developer tools more easily. When you open one of the developer shells from Visual Studio, either as a separate app or in the Terminal window, it opens to the directory of your current solution (if you have a solution loaded). To open the terminal in Visual Studio, choose View > Terminal. The Visual Studio terminal is built on top of Windows Terminal. You can also open multiple tabs of each shell. Starting in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.5, Visual Studio includes an integrated terminal that can host either of these shells (Developer Command Prompt and Developer PowerShell). This shell has the same environment variables set as Developer Command Prompt. For example, you can pass the output of one command (known as a cmdlet) to another cmdlet. Visual Studio Developer PowerShell - More powerful than a command prompt. Visual Studio Developer Command Prompt - A standard command prompt with certain environment variables set to make using command-line developer tools easier. Visual Studio 2019 includes two command-line shells for developers:

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