Microsoft WHAT THE ACTUAL F**K. WHAT IS THE REASON TO UPDATE VISUAL STUDIO INSTALLER TO UNINSTALL VISUAL STUDIO.

“New code to uninstall vs studio

@devTea I am convinced that Uninstaller is mining some crypto currency

Did you somehow pass an argument to the exe to indicate intent of uninstalling?

No? Don't blame them becuae how could it tell?

@irene Updating component list never took an hour on any Linux distro I used.

@MrCSharp I never knew there is a man page for Visual Studio Uninstaller. So how am I supposed to guess arguments? Brute force random words and hope that it does what I want it to do?

@jokerreturns a quick Bing search: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/...

also, I meant that your actions leading to launching VS installer in no way indicated your intention to it to uninstall. So it probably went through the regular motions.

I haven't tried the Uninstall arg (why would I anyways... I never run into probs with VS)

@irene I exaggerated the duration to an hour. But updating components/package lists never took that long on any Linux Distro

@MrCSharp I tried to uninstall from control panel which is supposed to remove it

@jokerreturns the installer is not MSI so control panel probably doesn't know how to issue the correct arguments to it.

Anyways, no point in arguing over this. We know now why this happened.

@MrCSharp Are you trying to say that control panel doesn't keep track of the programs that are not installed by exe files and its job is to keep track of programs that are installed by msi files?

Ps: I am not trying to argue and I don't know much about the working of windows internals

Yep. Have only ever had Microsoft products do this. Fuck knows why.. other programs selected to uninstall from control panel uninstall fine.
I guess the install/uninstall application must need to be the latest version to uninstall the latest version of VS as I imagine they aren’t updated in step. Much like the whole OSX/ITunes/iOS thang.

@jokerreturns more like VS 2017 is made of multiple packages that are installed by the installer. The control panel is only aware of the installer but doesn't know it needs to pass uninstall to it as an argument since it is not an MSI itself. However the Uninstaller will issue an uninstall command to the packages MSIs and remove them.

So control panel knows about the vs installer, it just doesn't know how to deal with it so it launches it normally.

This my assumption, you can verify this by launching the installer from control panel and check the arguments passed to it in task manager. I am not next to a PC now so can't try it.

I'd presume the person who coded that stuff for Microsoft previously worked at Adobe (formerly at Macromedia) and designed the brilliant workflow where the software tells you to update, you download another software (not directly, nono, by means of the browser), and then you launch that other software which in turn tells you that you have to close the browser in order to run the update. That was pure genius, no wonder Microsoft hired that guy or gal.

maybe it is an update to clean more efficient? might be the only acceptible explanation.

@lunorian I used to work with cuda and cpp on windows and I don't use windows for development anymore. So I uninstalled it just to clear space on my ssd

You don't uninstall Visual Studio. Never.
It goes to peace, with the machine it was installed on.

One way trip my friend.