🔍 VSCWhere

A command-line tool to locate Visual Studio Code installations on Windows, inspired by vswhere.

🤔 Why VSCWhere?

Need to find VS Code installations in scripts, CI/CD pipelines, or tooling? VSCWhere discovers all VS Code installations on your system and returns their paths, versions, and metadata - just like vswhere.exe does for Visual Studio.

Key Features

✅ Discover All Installations: Finds Stable, Insiders, and Exploration builds

✅ vswhere-Compatible CLI: Familiar flags like -format, -property, -latest

✅ JSON Output: Easy to parse in scripts and automation

✅ Tiny Binary: ~220 KB standalone executable, no dependencies

📦 Installation

Download vscwhere.exe from the latest release and place it in your PATH.

🚀 Usage

# List all VS Code installations
vscwhere

# Include Insiders builds
vscwhere -prerelease

# Get only the latest version
vscwhere -latest

# Output as JSON
vscwhere -format json

# Get just the installation path
vscwhere -property installationPath

# Combine flags
vscwhere -latest -format json -nologo

Example Output

VSCWhere version 0.1.0

installationPath: C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\
installationVersion: 1.107.1
productPath: C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\Code.exe
productId: stable
isPrerelease: false
displayName: Visual Studio Code
extensionsPath: C:\Users\user\.vscode\extensions
userDataPath: C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Code

JSON Output

[
  {
    "installationPath": "C:\\Users\\user\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Microsoft VS Code\\",
    "installationVersion": "1.107.1",
    "productPath": "C:\\Users\\user\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Microsoft VS Code\\Code.exe",
    "productId": "stable",
    "isPrerelease": false,
    "displayName": "Visual Studio Code",
    "extensionsPath": "C:\\Users\\user\\.vscode\\extensions",
    "userDataPath": "C:\\Users\\user\\AppData\\Roaming\\Code"
  }
]

📋 CLI Reference

Flag	Description
-all	Find all instances (default)
-prerelease	Include Insiders/prerelease builds
-latest	Return only the latest version
-format <type>	Output format: text (default), json
-property <name>	Return only the specified property
-nologo	Suppress version banner
-sort	Sort by version (descending)
-help, -?	Show help

Properties

Property	Description
installationPath	VS Code installation directory
installationVersion	Version number
productPath	Path to Code.exe
productId	Product identifier (stable/insider)
isPrerelease	True for Insiders builds
displayName	Human-readable product name
extensionsPath	User extensions directory
userDataPath	User settings/data directory

🔧 Building from Source

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/CodingWithCalvin/VSCWhere.git
cd VSCWhere

# Build release binary
cargo build --release

# Binary is at target/release/vscwhere.exe

👥 Contributors

📄 License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.

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Made with ❤️ by Coding With Calvin