Visual Studio 2019: Cannot get rid of warning on VC++ 2015 runtime not found

Question

I have Visual Studio 2019 Community Edition, with a UWP project. At some point in time, a new reference appeared in my project, Visual C++ 2015 redistributables., with a warning when I compile, which says

The referenced component 'Visual C++ 2015 Runtime for Universal Windows Platform Apps' could not be found

I tried to remove the reference by right click => remove, but when I close and reopen the project, it re-appears. Such reference, moreover, seems not to be saved in the .csproj, nor in other solution files.

I tried to download the redistributables as specified here https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sqlserver/en-US/eab6ac56-44c7-416e-8397-d062baed987c/uwpc-i-got-issues-when-i-was-trying-to-release-my-app?forum=wpdevelop but when I try to install it says I already have a newer version.

How can I get rid of this warning / reference?

Answer 1

To get this to go away I had to do two steps:

1. Install the C++ (v142) Universal Windows Platform tools under Optional components in the Visual Studio installers Workload modifier (or whatever is the latest by the time you are reading this answer.)

2. In your project under Reference Manager > Universal Windows > Extensions un-check Visual C++ 2015 Runtime for Universal Windows Platform. When I closed the dialog, it did not remove the reference but it did fix it. I was expecting to have to re-add the reference but I did not, it was still there.