• One of the following operating systems: Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, or Windows Server 2012 R2.

  Important
  If you are using Windows 7, you can develop apps for Android and iOS, but not for Windows or Windows Phone.

• Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 (Professional, Ultimate, Premium, or Community Edition) with the following features installed:

  • Tools for Maintaining Store apps for Windows 8

  • Windows Phone 8.0 SDK

    You can add these features to an existing installation of Visual Studio 2013 Update 4. In Control Panel, choose Programs and Features. Select Visual Studio 2013 from the list, and then choose Change. In the Visual Studio setup window, chooseModify. In the features list, select the two options, as shown in the illustration.

    

• If you are using Visual Studio 2015 Preview instead of Visual Studio 2013, see the installation procedure in this topic.

To build apps for specific device platforms, there are a few additional requirements:

• Android emulator works best on computers that can run the Intel HAXM driver. See Run Your Apache Cordova App on Android.

• Windows Phone emulators require a computer that can run Hyper-V. For more information, see the emulator‘s system requirements.

• iOS and the iOS Simulator require a Mac computer capable of running Xcode 6 (Xcode 6 is recommended). For additional steps, see Install Tools to Build for iOS.

  Tip
  If you want to build iOS on a cloud service instead of Mac hardware, see Build and Simulate iOS in the Cloud.

To get the Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova extension, go to the Microsoft Download Center. Follow the steps in the next section to install the extension.

Important
If you previously installed a CTP of the Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova (Multi-Device Hybrid Apps), you must first uninstall the CTP using Control Panel, Programs and Features before installing the Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 and the current CTP.

In Visual Studio 2015 Preview, Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova can be installed as an optional feature during installation. For the installation procedure, see Get started with Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova.

The installer first installs a patch to Visual Studio to support Cordova app development. Then it gives you the option to install the following third-party software. Most of these are open-source software required by specific platforms or by Apache Cordova.

• Joyent Node.js enables Visual Studio to integrate with the Apache Cordova Command Line Interface (CLI) and Apache Ripple Emulator.

• Git CLI is required only if you need to manually add Git URIs for specific Cordova plug-ins.

• Google Chrome is required to run the Apache Ripple emulator for iOS and Android.

• Apache Ant 1.8.0 or later is required for the Android build process.

• Oracle Java JDK 7 is required for the Android build process.

• Android SDK is required for the Android build process and Ripple.

• SQLite for Windows Runtime is required to add SQL connectivity to Windows apps (for the WebSQL Polyfill plugin).

• Apple iTunes is required for deploying an app to an iOS device connected to your Windows PC.

To install the Visual Studio extension and dependencies

If you choose not to install one or more dependencies with the extension, you can install them later manually.

Caution
You can install the dependencies in any order, except for Java. You must install and configure Java before you install the Android SDK.

Read the following information and use these links to install dependencies manually.

• Joyent Node.js

  We recommend installing the x86 version of Node.js.

• Google Chrome

• Git Command Line Tools

  When you install Git command line tools, select the option that adds Git to your command prompt path.

  Caution
  Git command line tools 1.9.3 are installed by default. Unexpected failures may occur if you install a version prior to 1.9.0.

• Apache Ant

  • Download and extract Ant to a location like C:/ant-1.x.x

  • Set the ANT_HOME environment variable to point to the preceding location.

  • Add %ANT_HOME%\bin to the system path.

    Note
    If you need to set this environment variable manually, see Override system environment variables.

• Oracle Java 7

  • Set the JAVA_HOME environment variable to C:/Program Files/Java/jdk1.7.0_55

  • Add this to the system path: %JAVA_HOME%\bin

    Note
    If you need to set this environment variable manually, see Override system environment variables.

• Android SDK with the following SDK packages:

  • Android SDK Tools (latest version)

  • Android SDK Platform-tools (latest version)

  • Android SDK Build-tools (latest version)

  • Android 4.4.x (API level 19) with the following packages:

    • SDK Platform

    • ARM EABI v7a System Image

    • Intel x86 Atom System Image

    • Google APIs (x86 System Image)

    • Google APIs (ARM System Image)

  The following illustration shows the required packages in the Android SDK Manager.

  

  Set the ADT_HOME environment variable to the SDK installation location.

  Add this to the system path: %ADT_HOME%\tools;%ADT_HOME%\platform-tools

  If you need to set this environment variable manually, see Override system environment variables.

  Tip
  If you install the Android SDK to its default location on Windows, it gets installed to C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk.

• Apple iTunes (x86, x64)

• SQLite

• WebSocket4Net (required if you’re developing your app on Windows 7)

  1. Download WebSocket4Net(0.9).Binaries.zip from CodePlex.

  2. From the downloaded zip file, copy net45\Release\WebSocket4Net.dll into the %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\WebClient\Diagnostics\ToolWindows folder on your computer.

A few extra steps are required to build and run apps for iOS from Visual Studio. See Install Tools to Build for iOS.

Visual Studio detects the configurations for the third-party software you’ve installed, and maintains the installation paths in the following environment variables:

• ADT_HOME points to the Android installation path.

• ANT_HOME points to the Ant folder on your computer.

• GIT_HOME points to the Git installation path.

• JAVA_HOME points to the Java installation path.

Visual Studio uses these environment variables when building and running your app. You can view the environment variables and revise their values through the Visual Studio Options dialog box. You might want to override the default settings for one of the following reasons:

• Visual Studio was unable to verify the path. In this case, a warning is displayed next to the environment variable.

• You have multiple versions of the software installed, and you’d like to use a specific version.

• You want your global environment path to be different from the local Visual Studio environment.

To override the variables

Visual Studio has been test against a specific version of Apache Cordova. We intend to support selecting a Cordova version at a per-project level, but even now it is possible to apply a patch to use a different version of Cordova across all projects on your system.

Caution
Patching Visual Studio is not officially supported. You may run into unexpected behaviors and we recommend that only advanced users take these steps. The patch makes system-wide changes to your machine.

To update Visual Studio to use a different version of Cordova

To revert to the supported version of Cordova

For iOS build support on your Mac, the version of Cordova that vs-mda-remote uses must match the version that you installed for Visual Studio. The following steps describe how to update vs-mda-remote to use a specific version of Cordova. For complete information on installing iOS build tools, see Install Tools to Build for iOS.

To update vs-mda-remote on your Mac to a different version of Cordova

To revert vs-mda-remote on your Mac to the supported version

Concepts

Other Resources