msbuild - Using v120 Platform Toolset in Visual Studio 2015

Question

I am using Visual Studio 2015 (Update 3) in Windows 10. I have one Solution consisting of several projects. One of these projects has to be built with platform toolset Visual Studio 2013(v120). Unfortunately, It's not installed on my machine. I know how to change platform toolset for projects or retarget Solution but I don't want to do this. I want to install Visual Studio 2013 platform toolset (v120) for Visual Studion 2015. The only way that I found so far is to install the whole Visual Studio 2013 besides 2015 version which is not a good solution.

I have tried different solution for this problem such as installing v120 build tools separately and Look at this link. But it did not work for me. Any solution except installing Visual Studio 2013 would be welcome.

Answer 1

You can install the VS2013 toolset from your VS2015 installer without installing Visual Studio 2013.

From the 2015 installer, select "Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.0/8.1 Tools" and "Common Tools for Visual C++ 2015":

After the installation has completed, you will find the platform Toolset below:

You should now be able to build your project with the platform toolset for Visual Studio 2013 (v120).