Almost certain I’m doing it wrong (hobbyist), but most versions of vs studio have some kind of cli interface for installing workloads. I’ll fight with that until I figure out which includes the cli compiler tools. Write a script to automate install. Afterwards I’ll use a build system that calls vcvarsall.bat and perform the build from the cli.

I agree, it feels clunky and bloated compared to what I’m used to (especially if multiple vs studio versions required) but it gets the job done.

I’m very curious what workflows look like for people that know what they’re doing when building c/cpp on windows.