I love PowerShell, but I do a lot with the Visual Studio developer prompt and that’s still good old cmd.

Luckily, you can make your PowerShell prompt also a Visual Studio prompt.

First, go get the PowerShell Community Extensions. If you’re a PowerShell user you should probably have these already. You can either get them from the CodePlex site directly or install via Chocolatey.

Now, in your PowerShell profile (stored at %UserProfile%\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1) add the following:

Import-Module Pscx

# Add Visual Studio 2015 settings to PowerShell
Import-VisualStudioVars 140 x86

# If you'd rather use VS 2013, comment out the
# above line and use this one instead:
# Import-VisualStudioVars 2013 x86

Next time you open a PowerShell prompt, it’ll automatically load up the Visual Studio variables to also make it a Visual Studio prompt.

Take this to the next level by getting a “PowerShell Prompt Here” context menu extension and you’re set!