UE4 only works with Visual Studio 2017?

First my plugin couldn’t build because Unity redeclares variables (which it apparently never uses because simply deleted them from the source and everything still compiles fine)

Next my plugin failed to build my 2 files because Android was not valid target (???). So I edited my UE4.27 and uninstalled support for all optional platforms (Android, iOs and Linux were installed, now they are gone).

Now my plugin fails to build because I only have VS2019 and VS2022 installed:

UATHelper: Package Plugin Task (Windows):   ERROR: Visual Studio 2017 must be installed in order to build this target.

What the hell… !!! Is this for real? I can’t compile 2 scripts into a package without first installing Visual Studio 2017?

I copy pasted the entire command that was executed, resulting in that error, into the command line and manually replaced -2017 with -2022 and that ran without a hitch.

I don’t know what other steps UE4 would have run after that one where it bombed out but I was left with a folder with lots of files in it that were not needed so I just went in manually and deleted everything except the Plugins folder. Once I moved that into my UE install folder it loaded just fine… until I activate it. Then UE4 tries to restart and then UE4 crashes until I open the UPROJECT file in TextEdit and remove the plugin

It seems that whatever is calling that file is forcing it to call VS2017 for some reason. Does anyone know where this is set and how I can change this so I can have a clean build process that doesn’t require this hands-on post processing?

In my case, the command that I had to copy paste was this (notice the -2022 I changed near the end):

D:\Programs\Unreal\UE_4.27\Engine\Binaries\DotNET\UnrealBuildTool.exe UE4Game Win64 Development -Project=D:\Desktop\MyTestPlugin\HostProject\HostProject.uproject -plugin=D:\Desktop\MyTestPlugin\HostProject\Plugins\MyTestPlugin\MyTestPlugin.uplugin -iwyu -noubtmakefiles -manifest=D:\Desktop\MyTestPlugin\HostProject\Saved\Manifest-UE4Game-Win64-Development.xml -nohotreload -2022 -log="C:\Users\Ryu\AppData\Roaming\Unreal Engine\AutomationTool\Logs\D+Programs+Unreal+UE_4.27\UBT-UE4Game-Win64-Development.txt"

Now the question becomes: What commands would the Build process have called after this step? I can get no further than this

Is nobody able to help with this? see on Google people have been having this problem for years now. Surely SOMEONE out there must have SOME clue?