FWIW I just hit these both, separately, setting up on home PC outside of Google for first time. I probably missed selecting some option during VS2015 install.

Note I have both VS2015 and VS2017 installed, and I tried modifying VS2017 to install Win10 SDK and all seemingly relevant debugger tools but none installed cdb.exe.

I had to install the full WDK to get cdb.exe.

Thanks for the information - it's tedious to test all the install variants so it's good to get some data points to guide how to phrase the instructions and the error messages.

Thanks for looking at this, it seems possible/likely (?) that there is some optional install with VS2017 that will both install the 2015 toolchain and cdb.exe.

On 2015 toolchain, I saw the option to add it to the VS 2017 install but I haven't tried it yet. Since I had already gone ahead and installed VS 2015, I'd need to uninstall that, then add the 2015 toolchain to VS 2017, and then see if it works. And I figure it's possible that it would, but that my overall Windows install is tainted somehow from the previous VS 2015 install, so it would be a data point, but not definitive.

On cdb.exe, I did later modify VS 2017 install and add the four or so debugging/tools-specific line items and the Win10 SDK, but none of those seemed to add cdb.exe binary. So they may have been installed in a different directory, or not at all, for whatever reason.

The following revision refers to this bug:
  https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/6c3d410ea272423ac277dc3f3e3def6490dfd6dc

commit 6c3d410ea272423ac277dc3f3e3def6490dfd6dc
Author: brucedawson <brucedawson@chromium.org>
Date: Mon May 01 20:27:19 2017

Improve error message when debuggers not installed

When building Chrome we require that you have the "Debugging tools for
Windows" feature of the Windows 10 SDK installed. The error messages
when this non-default component is not installed are a bit cryptic. This
adds a more explicit error message.

The new error message looks like this:

>gn gen out\debug
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "c:/src/chromium4/src/build/vs_toolchain.py", line 448, in <module>
    sys.exit(main())
  File "c:/src/chromium4/src/build/vs_toolchain.py", line 444, in main
    return commands[sys.argv[1]](*sys.argv[2:])
  File "c:/src/chromium4/src/build/vs_toolchain.py", line 309, in CopyDlls
    _CopyDebugger(target_dir, target_cpu)
  File "c:/src/chromium4/src/build/vs_toolchain.py", line 331, in _CopyDebugger
    '10 SDK.' % full_path)
Exception: dbghelp.dll not found in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Debuggers\x86\dbghelp.dll"
You must install the "Debugging Tools for Windows" feature from the Windows 10 SDK.
ERROR at //build/toolchain/win/BUILD.gn:39:3: Script returned non-zero exit code.
  exec_script("../../vs_toolchain.py",
  ^----------
Current dir: c:/src/chromium4/src/out/debug/
Command: C:/src/depot_tools/python276_bin/python.exe -- c:/src/chromium4/src/build/vs_toolchain.py copy_dlls c:/src/chromium4/src/out/debug Debug x86
Returned 1.
See //BUILD.gn:65:1: which caused the file to be included.
group("gn_all") {
^----------------

R=wkorman@chromium.org
BUG= 702697 

Review-Url: https://codereview.chromium.org/2853083002
Cr-Commit-Position: refs/heads/master@{#468397}

[modify] https://crrev.com/6c3d410ea272423ac277dc3f3e3def6490dfd6dc/build/vs_toolchain.py

Good enough? Fixed?

The process will get simpler when Microsoft ships a fixed version of the 15063 SDK.

FWIW I think it's much better (I hit the previous error and had to figure out what I was doing wrong, this says what's wrong).

New error in debugger info looks good to me. This bug also mentions re: clarifying the compiler tools warning message, is that essentially the same/covered by the above change or is something else warranted there?

The current message for when the compilers aren't installed is:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat is missing - make sure VC++ tools are installed.

I can't think of a way to improve that. I'm not sure what I had in mind when I included that in the original bug report.

Seems good enough. Feel like maybe we meant to link to actual url, or give specific versions seen vs. needed, but adding that is fragile per our earlier discussions. Can see how folks do with this. Thanks again for following up on these items.

FYI, I met same message as topic starter. I've reinstalled Windows SDK 14393 with all checked components and it helped.