Visual Studio 2015 Portable -

Even if you find a repack that launches, expect:

For brave developers: You can make a specific project portable using the Visual Studio Build Tools (command-line only).

Ingredients:

Workflow:

Compile without the IDE.

Limitation: No GUI debugging, no IntelliSense, no forms designer. But for batch builds, it works.

To understand why Visual Studio 2015 cannot be run from a USB stick like Notepad++, you need to understand its architecture.

Visual Studio 2015 Portable typically refers to an unofficial, modified version of Visual Studio Enterprise 2015 designed to run directly from a folder or a USB drive without requiring administrative privileges or a traditional system installation. These releases are popular among students, developers working on locked-down corporate machines, or users who prefer keeping their development environment self-contained. Visual Studio 2015 Portable

VS Code is fully portable. You can download the VSCode-win32-ia32-portable.zip version and run it from any drive.

To compile C# 7+ (but not .NET Framework 4.6 specific):

To compile C++ (legacy-style):

You lose Windows Forms / WPF designers, but for console apps, libraries, and ASP.NET Core, it’s excellent.

Microsoft provides tools to create a network-based installation of VS 2015 that can be run from a network share (not a USB drive directly, but accessible from any client).

Steps:

This still requires installation per machine, but the source is portable.