Hi Guys,

This isn't one of those “what is better?” threads, but more of a “How did they do it?” type question.

Atmel Studio is based directly from an older version of Visual Studio (not to be confused with VS Code). So my question is, how did they even do that to begin with? Is there somewhere you can get a completely vanilla VS install and build upon that and make it your own?

Atmel Studio installs completely independently and doesn't affect any present installations of Visual Studio whatsoever.

I sometimes use the Visual Studio to create empty projects and code 6502 ASM and compile it using batch files etc. The thought of being able to create an entire VS version (so to speak) and have it install independently seems like a very fun project in itself.

Where would you even begin to do this though? I have no idea how Atmel made their install completely independent.

Any ideas would be fantastic!

“based on the same Visual Studio shell, which make them very similar in functionality, usage and appearance.”
https://www.vihttps://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/older-downloads/isolated-shell/https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/older-downloads/isolated-shell/sualmicro.com/page/User-Guide.aspx?doc=Getting-started-which-IDE.html

https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/older-downloads/isolated-shell/​​

Sorry for the extra post, the forum is garbage and I couldn't even edit the prev post.

ED: Fixed link that the forum software mangled.

Amazing! Huge thanks for the link. That looks very promising.