I submitted this as a tech support issue to Microsoft who accepted it as a bug in the install ("there is no VSVars32.bat in the C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\Common7\Tools directory.").

However, there is a work-around:

From MS:

At least, since there is a VsDevCmd.bat, there is a Visual Studio 2017 Developer Command Prompt, which also sets, modifies environment variables (Framework40Verion, FrameworkDir, FrameworkDIR64, FrameworkVersion, FrameworkVersion64, INCLUDE, IPCPATH, PATH, VCINSTALLDIR, VCToolsInstallDir, ...) C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\EDITION\Common7\Tools\VsDevCmd.bat

Run C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\EDITION\Common7\Tools\VsDevCmd.bat where EDITION is the type of VS2017 install, i.e. C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\Common7\Tools\VsDevCmd.bat for the Enterprise install. This sets up the needed environment variables and batch builds will work.

Hope this helps anyone struggling with the same issue.

If its any help to anyone... If you modify your Visual Studio 2017 installation to install the component: "VC++ 2015.3 v140 toolset for Desktop (x86,x64)"

then the 'VSVars32.bat' file which is missing, will be installed (as its a component of VC++ 2015, but not VC++ 2017).

VS2017 has reworked its directory structure and filenames. The file is no longer titled "VsVars32.bat", you should look for the file 'vcvars.bat', which can be located in ..\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\EDITION\Common7\Tools\vsdevcmd\ext\vcvars.bat (using Adam's syntax, replace EDITION with the version of Visual Studio you use).

For simplicity, you can use %VSAPPIDDIR% in your call to point to the IDE folder where devenv.exe is located, and go back one folder to define your path to the batch file. For example:

call "%VSAPPIDDIR%..\Tools\vsdevcmd\ext\vcvars.bat"