Visual Studio upgrade installations

[Tom]

Updating of Visual Studio installations is possible using the Custom Software feature.

Select the right "bootstrapper" for your use case / license, e.g. if you upgrade 2019, you must use the 2019 bootstrapper:

2022:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/install/create-an-offline-installation-of-visual-studio?view=vs-2022#step-1---download-the-visual-studio-bootstrapper

2019:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/install/create-an-offline-installation-of-visual-studio?view=vs-2019#step-1---download-the-visual-studio-bootstrapper

2017:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/visualstudio/visual-studio-2017/install/create-an-offline-installation-of-visual-studio?view=vs-2017#step-1---download-the-visual-studio-bootstrapper

All you need to upgrade a given installation is to run it with these parameters: upgrade --quiet --wait --installPath="C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community". This will automatically upgrade the installation in the mentioned folder.

It is important to pay attention to the path, even an extra trailing \ will cause the operation to fail.

You also need to consider if the old installation is 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit when entering the installPath.

If you supply the wrong path, no harm should happen, the installer just fails to upgrade Visual Studio.