How to download Visual Studio 2017 Community Edition for offline installation?

Question

I am trying to get a Visual Studio 2017 Community Edition offline distribution by executing vs_Community.exe --layout f:\vs2017c\ as offered in the documentation (vs_Community.exe downloaded here, or by direct link) but this doesn't work. All I get are 2 files: f:\vs2017c\vs_installer.version.json and f:\vs2017c\certificates\vs_installer_opc.SignCertificates.p12. I have also tried /layout instead of --layout with no luck. What am I doing wrong? By the way, are there ISO files available perhaps?

UPDATE: I have installed the certificate, restarted the computer and re-tried running the installer a number of times. Nothing has really changed. A couple of times I could notice something written in red appearing in the console for less than half a second. Finally I have ran CCleaner (with full CCEnhancer custom to-clean list) to clean up everything (again! I have already done this before the first try) and tried again and now it is downloading...

UPDATE2:

I thought I have succeede but I was wrong. What I have done was a bat file of the following contents:

vs_Community.exe --layout f:\vs2017c --lang en-US --add [a list of 133 individual component IDs] 

As the result of running this command the installer has tried to download all the components (including those I did not select) in all the languages (I only need en-us).

I have noticed it is downloading what I don't need, terminated the process and deleted everything for a fresh start. Next time I have only individual workloads instead of listing all the individual components. I have even tried simplifying it to just one workload like

vs_Community.exe --lang en-US --layout f:\vs2017c\ --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.ManagedDesktop 

but this just doesn't work. Instead, the following pops up for half a second as the "Give us a minute. We'll be done soon..." progress bar finishes:

UPDATE3:

I have found out that putting the backslash at the end of the layout path beraks the stuff. I.e. vs_Community.exe --layout f:\vs2017c works but vs_Community.exe --layout f:\vs2017c\ does not. This is not the only problem, however - listing a number of workloads tohether with ;includeRecommended;includeOptional after vs_Community.exe --layout f:\vs2017c breaks it too (although it worked as I've tried it with just one workload and one extra component AND (an important condition) purged the temporary files)...

UPDATE4:

I have managed to grab the f:\vs2017c\q.2ho\resources\app\layout\Setup.exe you can see in the window title on the screenshot (which is a little bit tricky as it appears for just some seconds and gets automatically deleted shortly after) but its help output is very different from the one above. It seems that it chain-launched some other exe in the previous case. Its own output is below, no obvious way to specify individual workloads/components:

Finally I have given up trying to choose individual components and workloads and tried the following with no luck either: vs_Community.exe --lang en-en --layout f:\vs2017c --all --includeRecommended --includeOptional.

At the end I have ended up using just vs_Community.exe --lang en-en --layout f:\vs2017c --all - it works and only downloads the language I need, though includes a number of components I don't need actually. The resulting directory size is 18 gigabytes.

I've finished downloading and dot it installed already as by now but the question about how to actually use the layout feature parameters reliably the way they are meant to remains.

Answer 1

• Saved the "vs_professional.exe" in my user Download directory, didn't work in any other disk or path.
• Installed the certificate, without the reboot.
• Executed the customized (2 languages and some workloads) command from administrative Command Prompt window targetting an offline root folder on a secondary disk "E:\vs2017offline".

Never thought MS could distribute this way, I understand that people downloading Visual Studio should have advanced knowledge of computers and OS but this is like a jump in time to 30 years back.