The (unofficial) convention for writing NuGet packages for front-end libraries seems to be to strip out the JavaScript files and put them in the Scripts folder, and strip out the CSS files and put them in the Content folder. Rarely are these files put in subfolders, so you end up with a huge number of files littering the Scripts and Content folders.
The only way to separate your own code is to put that in a subfolder, or a different folder altogether (see the SPA templates Durandal and HotTowel where an "App" folder is added).
I personally like the "unopinionated" solution that Twitter Bower provides. Put all front-end packages in a root folder called "Components" and do not mess with the original structure of the package.
I am wondering about giving up on NuGet for front-end libraries and using Bower instead and just wonder if anyone has any experience of combining the two? Alternatively, is there a way to install GitHub repos directly using NuGet without creating a NuGet package?
We use NuGet and Bower both and it has worked well for us so far. We are slowly moving the front-end libraries to Bower. You will have to create a Nuget package to use it from Nuget to install.
Related
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.
I would like to use NuGet packages for building packages for core helper libraries which I would like to add as source files into other projects. I want to use source files instead of libraries for several reasons, the main one being that I need them in SharePoint Projects, which is on the one hand much easier to deploy than additional libraries, and on the other hand helps to reduce version conflicts.
I know that I can add the source files as content to NuGet Packages, which would install them with the package. But this won't work together with package restore, and I don't want to have these files checked into source control in all projects.
Is it somehow possible to make a NuGet package which doesn't copy the files to the project, but instead adds file links, which point back to the file in the package folder, to the project? I think this approach would solve my use case.
Thanks
pascal
It is possible to add linked files with the use of PowerShell scripts, for example with this NuGet script: http://www.nuget.org/packages/Baseclass.Contrib.Nuget.Linked/
I am building an MVC4 web application with VS2012 professional with NuGet Package Manager version 2.2.31210. I have multiple projects in my solution, all sharing various packages I installed using NuGet. One of my projects is an MVC4 web application where I am using packages such as bootstrap, jquery UI, etc, all installed using NuGet.
When I clone a fresh copy of my entire solution from my repository and build my MVC4 project, the package restore feature seems to be working: it creates the packages directory under the solution direcotry and populates it will all the versions of the packages I expect to see. However, the content files do not get copied to the appropriate places in the MVC app directory. The weird thing is that it does create directories for the content, but does not copy the content files themselves.
For example, I am using the Twitter Bootstrap package which appears in the packages/Twitter.Bootstrap.2.2.2. In the MVC project a directory called bootstrap (containing css, img, and js directories) gets created in the Content directory. But, no css or js files are copied into those directories!
Does anyone have a clue what magic incantation I must utter to get the build to copy these content files from the NuGet packages directory?
This is a very common issue we are all having. I've created an MSBuild Task NugetContentRestoreTask that will do this trick for you. Run the following command in the Package Manager Console:
Install Nuget Content Restore MSBuild Targets
PM> Install-Package MSBuild.NugetContentRestore
The only thing left is to call it from your BeforeBuild Target with something like this:
Project File Targets
<Target Name="BeforeBuild">
<NugetContentRestoreTask SolutionDir="$(SolutionDir)" ProjectDir="$(ProjectDir)" />
</Target>
You can take a look at the source repo and find it on nuget.org
Additional Content Folders
This nuget only includes the default folders scripts, images, fonts, and content, it is not a recursive directory includes. For additional content subfolders - you must assign the property AdditionalFolders.
<Target Name="BeforeBuild">
<NugetContentRestoreTask SolutionDir="$(SolutionDir)" ProjectDir="$(ProjectDir)"
AdditionalFolders="less;sass;common" />
</Target>
I have found a workaround, but it is ugly. By executing the following command in the NuGet Package Manager Console: Update-Package -Reinstall all the files are indeed copied to their proper places within the Mvc project Content and Scripts directories.
Unfortunately, this is risky because you are likely to end up with the wrong versions of certain packages. For example, in my case after the command finishes executing (which takes quite a while by the way), I end up with jQuery version 1.4.4. This is way old, and I assume it must be an explicit dependency of some other package that is being updated. So it appears that the order in which the packages actually get updated by NuGet is significant (it does not appear to parse the entire dependency tree for all packages and pick only the latest versions from the union of all dependencies, which seems like it would be the preferred behavior). Rather, as the command executes I see it replacing the jQuery package several times with different versions as it works its way through all the packages and their dependencies, only to end up with a very old version.
A similar approach is the execute the Update-Package -Reinstall command explicitly for each package that is causing my problem, but this is incredibly tedious and error prone.
The NuGet Package Restore feature should yield the same result as manually executing the Install-Package or Update-Package -Reinstall command for a package, but it does not.
I don't like to have the thirdparty JavaScript files under source control either. Thats why I've followed Jeff Handley advice in http://nuget.codeplex.com/workitem/2094 to create a solution my self. I didn't go the executable way, but created a nuget solution level package which does the trick.
http://www.nuget.org/packages/Baseclass.Contrib.Nuget.GitIgnoreContent/
It's tied to git, as it automatically updates the .gitignore file.
Short description:
Ignore nuget content files in git:
Generate entries in the .gitignore file to exclude nuget content files from the source repository
Restore nuget content files before building (Automatically in VS and manually with a powershell script
I've written a blog post describing how to use it.
http://www.baseclass.ch/blog/Lists/Beitraege/Post.aspx?ID=9&mobile=0
In Visual Studio 2015 Update 1, they now support contentFiles. The caveat with this is that it only works in projects that use project.json.
In reference to the problem that you are having, there is a good blog post that explains why you see this behaviour: NuGet Package Restore Common Misconceptions.
For my projects it turned out that content files work with PackageReferences only:
Existing project with nuget references via packages.config
Installed NuGet package with content files
Build project
No content files in output directory
Conversion of packages.config to PackageReferences
Build project
Content files have been copied to output directory
IDE is Visual Studio 2017. The project is an application project which means it is in the old csproj format.
I understand how to build dll nuget package
I would like to build a JavaScript nuget package of my own. I would like to learn how jQuery nuget package being constructed/installed by nuget.
How do I know how jQuery (or similar nuget package) nuget package being constructed? Especially I would like to know how these *.js being copied/ installed to specific folder (scripts) of a ASP.net MVC project
Thanks
NuGet uses a convention-over-configuration approach. This is what makes it easy to inject some files (images, code, javascript, etc) into a specific folder of a target Visual Studio project.
You can simply open a .nupkg file with any zip-utility (e.g. 7zip) and extract the archive to see its contents.
A NuGet package can have 3 folders: lib, content & tools.
Anything in the content folder will be injected into the target project using the same relative path to the project root as to the content folder of the nuget package.
More info here: http://docs.nuget.org/docs/creating-packages/package-conventions
Also with respect to how jQuery or other similar Javascript libraries are packaged, here are some pointers.
The list of public jQuery/jQuery plugins that have been "NuGetified" can be see here http://nuget.org/packages?q=jquery The jQuery NuGet package page http://nuget.org/packages/jQuery has a note saying that it is maintained by the NuGet Community Packages project.
If you go to the CodePlex project at http://nugetpackages.codeplex.com/ and browse the source code, you'll find it contains a couple of sub projects. These are NuGet package projects for the respective open source (mainly Javascript) projects.
You will notice that they simply include the relevant pure Javascript packages, e.g. jquery-1.8.3.js, jquery-1.8.3.min.js, etc. in the Content/Scripts path.
I have some NuGet package that contains both DLL file and web related files like JavaScript, Stylesheet and image files. I want to create package that only install web related file to web project only (including ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC project). What is the easiest way to do that?
Thanks,
PS. I think it should be possible via Powershell script. But I think, it is quite complex for me.
You probably want to use the Nuget Package Explorer. It allows you to create a package without the command line and add only the required files to your package (plus some easy config).
If I understand you correctly, you sometimes want to install just the DLL, and sometimes the DLL plus the web stuff. In this case it's best to create a separate package for the DLL, then another package with the web stuff which specifies the DLL package as a dependency of the Web package. This way it will automatically add the DLL when you add the Web content.
Here's a tutorial on Nuget Package Explorer that will probably help you.
I have a solution which I am using in several projects which works pretty nicely.
Create a second .Assets project, which contains the Assets, and reference all the files as links in your project, and mark them as embedded resources.
YourProject.Assets - contains the css/html/js/cshtml files
YourProject - files included as links, marked as Embedded Resource
Then include my EmbeddedResourceVirtualPathProvider Nuget package, and it will serve you assets from the Embedded Resources in YourProject.dll.
If someones wants to override the resources, they can install the .Assets nuget package and they will be included in their project and served.