Offline Install Xamarin with Visual Studio 2017

Question

We have a problem in our class where it's getting really impractical to download Visual Studio 2017 Community with Xamarin.

What I would like to do is create an offline installer that consists of just VS Community 2017 and all required components to run Xamarin and the Azure SDK.

I have read the offline installation documentation here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/install/create-an-offline-installation-of-visual-studio , but it seems aimed at installing all components (Which is over 20gb!).

Do any of you have a command or something else that would enable me to download just Visual Studio 2017 and all required components for Xamarin? I don't require anything else - not even Windows app development tools.

Answer 1

Please excute below command , It will download only Xamarin

vs_community.exe --layout c:\\vs2017offline -add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.NetCrossPlat --lang en-US

Offline Workload package more info available here :

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/install/workload-component-id-vs-community#mobile-development-with-net

Note : Andriod SDK should be download from Google. Android SDK Setup (API Level)

Answer 2

Try download it manually. View file Catalog.json at installation root. Find string containing "Xamarin.VisualStudio":

{"id":"Xamarin.VisualStudio","version":"4.6.3.4","type":"Vsix","payloads":[{"fileName":"Xamarin.VisualStudio.vsix","sha256":"c082f47bc00da4420cd1e90f167ad4285688b5c5df1d115c5dda1f1ec2aa1ffb","size":492545242,"url":" https://download.visualstudio.microsoft.com/download/pr/11327837/d68d54e233c956ff79799fdf63753c54/Xamarin.VisualStudio.vsix "}],"vsixId":"Xamarin.VisualStudio",

here

4.6.3.4 - version of Xamarin;

https://download.visualstudio.microsoft.com/download/pr/11327837/d68d54e233c956ff79799fdf63753c54/Xamarin.VisualStudio.vsix - try download this file, then check file size and checksum, here sha256.

If all ok, change file name to "Xamarin.VisualStudio.vsix" and put it to folder at root of instalation, and name it using id and version, here :

Xamarin.VisualStudio,version=4.6.3.4