Visual Studio 2019 image with Docker and LCOW, WSL, Qt and pre-heated VMs

The latest Visual Studio 2019 image update added a lot of new exciting stuff you were missing in your builds:

• Docker EE with Linux Containers on Windows (LCOW) support
• Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)
• Qt framework

Not only we updated the image, but we moved it to our fast Hyper-V environment with pre-heated VMs and now it will take seconds for new builds to start! All Visual Studio 2019 build VMs have nested virtualization enabled.

Docker with Linux containers support

Docker on Visual Studio 2019 image allows you to run Windows and Linux containers simultaneously without ever switching between Windows and Linux “modes”. Running a Linux container could be as simple as docker run --rm busybox echo hello_world.

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

There is WSL installed on Visual Studio 2019 image with the following Linux distributions:

• Ubuntu-18.04 (Default)
• Ubuntu-16.04
• openSUSE-42

You can run Linux commands inside WSL with a simple wsl <command> and you can switch between distributions with wslconfig.

Qt framework

Now you can build and test your Qt applications on Visual Studio 2019 image. The following Qt releases installed:

• Qt 5.13.1
• Qt 5.12.5
• Qt 5.9.8

And we have automated the installation of Qt with Packer, so you can use it with AppVeyor Bring-Your-Own-Cloud solution!

Give this new image a try and let us know if you have any questions or suggestions!

Phasing out “Windows Server 2019” image

If you are using Windows Server 2019 please switch to Visual Studio 2019 image as we are not going to evolve/update Windows Server 2019 image going forward.

Linux images on pre-heated VMs

With the increased demand for Linux builds we have moved Ubuntu, Ubuntu1804 and Ubuntu1604 images to Hyper-V environment with pre-heated VMs, so Linux builds start in seconds now!

Best regards,
AppVeyor team