title: Using LFS with Visual Studio 2017
body: <p>I wan't to use Visual Studio 2017 (15.5) together with a Git repository which tracks some files with Git LFS.</p>
  
  <p>I already have Git 2.15, which contains Git LFS, installed on the machine.</p>
  
  <p>I've Visual Studio 2017 installed with only the following workloads and without the Git component since it already is available on the machine:</p>
  
  <p><code>
  --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.ManagedDesktop 
  --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.NetWeb 
  --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.NetCoreTools 
  --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Wcf.Tooling
  </code></p>
  
  <p>Visual Studio fails now to checkout branches from the repository since it cannot find Git LFS.</p>
  
  <p>I assume this is because <code>git-lfs.exe</code> is not available on the path, and Visual Studio has its own Git instance in <code>c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Professional\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TeamFoundation\Team Explorer\Git\mingw32\bin\</code>. </p>
  
  <p>If I additionally install the standalone git-lfs installer, which makes <code>git-lfs</code> available on the path, checkout works on some machines but not on other (haven't found out what's the difference, maybe installation order or if it was a new installation or update of Visual Studio).</p>
  
  <p>If I remove the <code>c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Professional\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TeamFoundation\Team Explorer\Git\</code> folder everything works fine in Visual Studio, as it does use the Git version available from the path.</p>
  
  <p>My questions are:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>What is the supposed way to have Git LFS support in Visual Studio?</li>
  <li>Is there a way to have Visual Studio using the Git Version on the path instead of installing its own instance</li>
  <li>Does Visual Studio expect git-lfs on the path or should it also work with Git LFS installed through the bundled installer in recent versions of Git for Windows.</li>
  </ol>