The question I have is more to see if I'm able to save 25GB of hard drive space. I currently have 2022 Version of Visual Studio Community installed, though the engine I'm working in requires 2019 to be installed. how ever I have all the same required packages installed in 2022 version. (the engine for some reason does not want to use the newest version of VSC and is trying to force me to revert back) so if I install the previous version will the workloads installed with VSC 2022 be used in VSC 2019 or must I install the work loads independently of each VSC edition in order for me to use it properly ? If they are able to use the same workloads am i required to connect them in some way? if they are not able to read the same workloads, is there a way to get it use the same sources?

TIA.

CodePudding user response：

Visual Studio's installation is authored with two types of packages: "standalone" or shared packages, which are typically independent MSIs that are installed in a shared folder, or a component-specific location; and "per-instance" packages which are installed into the VS install location.

The former group is basically what you're asking for. However, different versions of VS may install different versions of those shared packages (e.g. VS2022 may have a newer version of a standalone component than what VS2019 shipped with, and both will get installed). The goal though is that as long as they use the same version, it will be shared.

The latter group is not shared, usually because they are tightly coupled to other Visual Studio components and attempting to re-use them across arbitrary versions of VS could lead to weird runtime behaviors.

So, to a large extent, VS does what you're trying to do, as much as it can (according to the people that create each component).