> It means I need to install Visual Studio.
I mean, sure, but (unless things have changed dramatically in the many years since I was a Windows dev) you don't have to do anything more than install VS. The compilers and nmake can be used without opening the GUI. IIRC, you can feed a VS project file (or -I'm pretty sure- a solution file) to nmake and get the same result you'd get from loading the GUI and pressing build.