document visual studio 2026

[rursprung]

Problem you are trying to solve

the docs still state that VS 2022 is the latest version:

rustup/doc/user-guide/src/installation/windows-msvc.md

Line 57 in 9a342e3

Rust supports Visual Studio 2017 and later but it is recommended that you use the latest version (currently 2022) for new projects.

however, VS 2026 has been out for a while now (since november 2025)

i couldn't find any info anywhere on the rust website about the compatibility of rust & VS 2026 (and, admittedly, didn't try it yet - i have VS 2022 installed, after all)

Solution you'd like

the docs are updated for VS 2026. either everything already works with VS 2026, then it's probably enough to just swap out 2022 for 2026 everywhere, otherwise a comment should be added with a link to a tracking issue for full VS 2026 support (though i didn't find any such issue)

Notes

No response

[rami3l]

@rursprung Thanks for spotting that!

@ChrisDenton May I ask if VS2026 is actually supported here, and should this part of the docs be delegated to https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/rustc/platform-support/windows-msvc.html#host-tooling to minimize duplication?

[ChrisDenton]

VS2026 should be fine now. There were bugs initially but I think they've been ironed out. My only remaining concern about recommending VS2026 over VS2022 is that GitHub action's default hasn't yet switched.

and should this part of the docs be delegated to https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/rustc/platform-support/windows-msvc.html#host-tooling to minimize duplication

I don't think so. Those docs are more focused towards rustc compiler developers whereas rustup docs are user focused. For people compiling rustc, it's important to use VS2022 because that's what CI currently uses to build LLVM so devs either need to use the same VS locally or else have to rebuild LLVM themselves (which is very slow).

That said both should probably mention VS2026, I just think it's worth keeping them separate.