Get the location of NuGet packages - nuget

Question

In my company we have some home made tools that are used in the build process when building other projects.
I need to use these tools in VS2017 BeforeBuild and AfterBuild scripts and it must work in MS Build as well.
The tools are distributed as NuGet packages and most of our projects are ported to PackageReference instead of Packages.config
I know that the current installation of MyTool (version X.Y.Z) is at C:\Users\Me\.nuget\packages\MyTool\X.Y.Z, but how do I reference it in my project file, so it also works when the next version is released?
I think C:\Users\Me\.nuget\packages can be replaced with $(NuGetPackageRoot), but what to do to always reference the version installed in the project?
Some Nuget packages seem to put contributions into MyProject.csproj.nuget.g.props and MyProject.csproj.nuget.g.targets in the obj folder, but I can find very little useful information about these files.

Answer 1

Inside a target, you can use this to create a property based on an item:
<ItemGroup>
<PackageReference Include="Newtonsoft.Json" Version="11.0.1" />
</ItemGroup>
<Target Name="PrintStuff" AfterTargets="AfterBuild">
<PropertyGroup>
<NewtonsoftJsonVersion Condition="'%(PackageReference.Identity)' == 'Newtonsoft.Json'">%(PackageReference.Version)</NewtonsoftJsonVersion>
<NewtonsoftJsonPath>$(NuGetPackageRoot)newtonsoft.json\$(NewtonsoftJsonVersion)\</NewtonsoftJsonPath>
</PropertyGroup>
<Message Importance="high" Text="JSON.NET version: $(NewtonsoftJsonVersion)" />
<Message Importance="high" Text="JSON.NET path: $(NewtonsoftJsonPath)" />
<Exec Command="ls" WorkingDirectory="$(NewtonsoftJsonPath)" Condition="'$(OS)' != 'Windows_NT'" />
<Exec Command="dir" WorkingDirectory="$(NewtonsoftJsonPath)" Condition="'$(OS)' == 'Windows_NT'" />
</Target>