Installation of "just" autoenv

[wolfv]

I am wondering whether it would be possible to install only the magic executables without any compilers?

Basically, I am interested in shipping it as a magical method for conda-forge to get Windows compilers easily.

We can packages msvcup itself, but for a magical experience it would be ideal if the cl.exe binaries would be installing MSVC upon invocation instead of a manual process.

[marler8997]

That is an interesting idea. What about this. What if you could invoke "msvcup" as sort of a universal MSVC tool wrapper? Assuming you have a lock file, I imagine this could look something like:

@rem invoke the compiler "cl":
msvcup cl msvcup.lock ...

@rem invoke the linker:
msvcup link msvcup.lock ...

@rem ...

This would lazily install whatever is needed from the lock file on the fly, and once installed, forward invocation to it.