Alex closed Visual Studio (for now) and opened a fresh Command Prompt. But cl still didn't work. Why?
The small vs_community__...exe downloaded in seconds. Alex double-clicked it. visual studio c++ 2019 download
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvarsall.bat" x64 Alex chose the Developer Command Prompt. Typed cl hello.cpp . And there it was: Alex closed Visual Studio (for now) and opened
Then the Visual Studio Installer launched—a separate program that manages all Visual Studio versions. It downloaded more components, then showed a screen: . it finished. No errors.
The estimated size: about 4 GB. Much smaller than 8 GB.
Alex clicked . The progress bar moved slowly—time for coffee. After 20 minutes (on a decent connection), it finished. No errors.