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%VSINSTALLDIR%

The Visual Studio environment variable %VSINSTALLDIR% points at the root directory of a Visual Studio installation.
Apparently, this directory is also referred to as the Visual Studio IDE directory.
Beginning with Visual Studio 2017, the path of the root directory includes both, the version and edition, aka offering, (such as professional or community).
Thus, the path to this root directory might be (and with a default installation is): C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\version\edition.
Up until version 2015, the root directory was located under %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio V.w.
With VS 2017 and later, this root directory can be found with the vswhere.exe utility.
This directory contains sub-directories such as

See also

The path of this directory is stored in the registry under the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\SxS\VS7.

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