Visual Studio Version Numbers

The Visual Studio version numbers and product naming convention has always been a little confusing to me.

Example: I have Visual Studio 2015 installed on my PC and the installation folder path is “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe”.

The table below shows the Product Name and corresponding Version number.

  • Visual Studio 2008 (V9.0)
  • Visual Studio 2010 (V10.0)
  • Visual Studio 2012 (V11.0)
  • Visual Studio 2013 (V12.0)
  • Visual Studio 2015 (V14.0)
  • Visual Studio 2017 (V15.0)

There must be a good reason why they didn’t align the Name and Version…..

Interesting VS 2017 Installation Notes:

  • VS 2017 installation path is “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe”
  • You can opt to install VS 2017 in a different location and drive, but note that most files will still be installed on the C:\ drive.
    • “About 75% of the files get installed to System folder by design. The other 25% gets installed to custom install path” (Source)

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