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I need to clear space on my PC's internal harddrive. Most data is on an external but software is installed locally, and there's a lot of software, not the least of which is multiple versions of Visual Studio which I need installed (some code needs to compile in VS2010, some in VS2013, some in VS2015...)
I found ~25GB of data in "C:\Users...\Documents\Community 2015\", almost 20GB of which is in the \OfflineCache\installers\ subdirectory and ~7GB in the \packages\ subdirectory. Looking in \packages\ I see some I use which I cannot delete if I expect programs I work on to compile - unless anyone has suggestions on how to ID which packages I've never used, I'll leave this folder alone. In \OfflineCache\installers\ there are many subdirectories named after platforms (eg. AndroidSDKV1, Gitx86V6, JavaJDKV1, PowerShellToolsV1, XamarinVSV5) - many of which I never interact with.
Can I delete the entire \OfflineCache\installers\ directory and expect my programs to still compile? I don't build any installers on this machine - when programs I work on are ready to go in an installer, someone else grabs it from version control and builds the installer on their end. If I can only delete certain \installers\ subdirectories without causing problems, (like with \packages) is there any way I can tell which I haven't used vs. which I have or am actively using?
The code I work on is in C++ or C# but probably relies on other scripting languages and packages that I'm not aware of.
cr0
Posted 2017-07-12T19:12:17.017
Reputation: 163
2Yes; You can delete the VS 2017 installer cache. If your programs don't compile you just repair the installation. – Ramhound – 2017-07-12T19:39:28.870
Wasn't sure if these files will rebuild. "Cache" makes me think so, but with Visual Studio and its occasionally very esoteric bugs, I didn't want to take my chances. – cr0 – 2017-07-12T22:36:16.070