I have created a nuget package containing a DLL that I want to share with multiple applications. I want to add this package to applications without setting a reference to the DLL. I am using dependency injection to load this DLL or a test DLL at run-time.
By default, nuget automatically sets a reference to all DLLs contained lib during installation.
Is there any way to configure the nuget package to not set a reference to the DLL when it is installed into my project?
Explicit assembly references. Although if your dll is loaded entirely at runtime (using MEF or Assembly.Load or something similar), then the build system might not copy the dll to the project's output directory. Note these docs are only correct for packages.config projects. I have a PR to improve the docs to explain how to do the equivalent thing for PackageReference.
Related
imagine the following situation:
Project A has some NuGet dependencies (ie Project Z, Project Y and Project X). It uses PackageReferences.
Now I want to pack Project A as a .nupkg using a .nuspec file. In a .nuspec file you can declare other NuGet dependencies and they will automatically resolved upon installation.
But is that necessary? I thought the PackageReferences would already resolve them.
When you use PackageReference items in your project, you no longer need a .nuspec file to pack a project. You should be able to pack it with dotnet pack -c Release or msbuild.exe -t:Pack -p:Configuration=Release. (Depending on the project type, you may need to install the NuGet.Build.Tasks.Pack for non-SDK-based .NET Framework projects. .NET Standard, Core, .NET 5+ projects should not need this)
You can still use a .nuspec file though, by specifying a NuspecFile property inside the csproj to instruct the pack task to use it. However, it will override all the settings that NuGet would autogenerate - that's the tradeoff for getting complete control over the .nuspec.
If you pack a project using PackageReference you can have a look at the generated .nuspec file in e.g. obj\Release\FooLib.1.0.0.nuspec.
I have a project (a PowerShell module) that relies upon a NuGet package, whose assemblies are loaded into my module via the Add-Type cmdlet. I would like to install this package via NuGet instead of manually copying it into the correct folder. This would save me from committing it's binaries to source control. Also: when thinking about CI/CD, I'd hate to have them in my repo.
I know I can curate a packages.config file and use nuget install instead. But this command installs the package together with it's dependencies into a separate folder and therefore the framework will (runtime) not find the required dependencies.
I know I could also provide a script that performs the nuget install and then copies the required .dll files into a single folder. But I would have to deal with the fact that the package might have different versions for different target frameworks and I'd need to handle the compatibility. Or maybe the package has other additional required files that I know nothing about.
So here my question: there has got to be a simpler way to do this? Something less ... circuitous and cumbersome?
I understand that it is now possible to configure a global package directory for all projects but I noticed that NuGet also puts files in my home directory. Is it possible to configure a single repo which will be used for all projects?
NuGet introduced a new way of package management in for project.json (now deprecated) and PackageReference-based projects (default .NET Core, .NET Standard).
Instead of creating a solution-local packages folder to which all packages are downloaded and extracted (alt: repositoryPath location in NuGet.Config override), all packages are downloaded to a global location (controlled by globalPackagesFolder in NuGet.Config) which is defaulted to %userprofile%\.nuget\packages (~/.nuget/packages on linux/Mac).
The idea is that you don't have to download packages multiple times and the csproj files no longer reference all individual files but just the package. .NET Core projects also do not need to copy the NuGet packages' assets because the generated .runtimeconfig.json file specifies the location of the global cache to look up the packages at runtime, so builds can be a little bit faster.
See this question, I believe everything will be clear after that
Setting up a common nuget packages folder for all solutions when some projects are included in multiple solutions
I have a solution in Visual Studio 2013 with more C# project files that have source code in common but are targeting for different platforms (.Net, WinRT, .Net Micro Framework and so on).
All the csproj files are under the same directory.
These projects use a Nuget package that is available for all the above platforms itself.
If I add this Nuget package for one of the project (ex. .Net), the package.config file is created and inside has reference to that target (ex. .Net). The package is downloaded in the packages folder.
If I try to add the same package but for a different target to another project in the solution, the UI tells me that the package is already installed. It's true because a package.config file is already there but I'd like to have the same package for a different target.
So my question is the following : how can I add the same Nuget package to all different projects but with different targets ?
Thanks,
Paolo
Unfortunately, I don't think NuGet supports your scenario.
NuGet expects the packages.config file to be in the same folder as the .csproj file. There should be a 1-to-1 relation between these files. You should create a separate folder for each project rather than keep all .csproj files in the same folder.
If you want to share code across multiple projects, the easiest way is to use the new Shared Project support in Visual Studio. Normally this only applies to Universal Projects, but there is an extension[1] that you can install that enables Shared Projects for all project types.
Simply create a new Shared Project. Add all you common code to it. Then in your platform specific projects, you can simply Add Shared Project Reference.
Since each project is now independent, NuGet will add the appropriate package.
Hope this helps. Good luck!
[1] Shared Project Reference Manager https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/315c13a7-2787-4f57-bdf7-adae6ed54450
We are migrating over to using packages and NuGet for managing our dependencies on 3rd party components. This works well when referencing packages from within Visual Studio or building on the build server via msbuild.
However there are a number of files that we would like to access in our build scripts and installers. Previously these would be in source control with a well known path, now as the version of the package that we are consuming changes so the path to the package and hence the files is changing.
Is there a simple way I can get the path to a given package? The best solution I currently have is to search for all packages.config files and extract the package version from them.
Examples of the files that we need to access are
The NUnit console executable from the NUnit.Runners package for running unit tests.
License files from various packages that we redistribute with our installer.
Using the packages.config file is a pretty good solution. NuGet itself uses two approaches:
Reading the package information from the packages.config and using that to resolve to the packages path.
Enumerating all the directories in the packages directory.
You could use NuGet.Core to do either of the above if you do not want to write the code yourself. The classes that can be used are the DefaultPackagePathResolver, the PackageReferenceFile and LocalPackageRepository or SharedPackageRepository.
One problem with the second approach is that sometimes NuGet may occasionally leave behind NuGet packages that are not necessarily referenced by a project. In that case looking at the package directories may give you the incorrect information.
The only other approach I can think of might be to read the project files looking for the assembly references. Although that would not work for a solution level package such as NUnit.Runners.