Background: I have two assemblies called "A" and "B". ""A" references "B". "A" also references some additional dll's (Microsoft.Enterprise Library.Data and Microsoft Enterprise Library.Common ) that I think should be packaged in the nupkg.
I believe my nupkg package should contain the assembly output from "A", "B" and the two "Microsoft Enterprise" assemblies so that when someone installs my package it will give them a direct reference to the Assembly "A" and the other three assemblies would be available (but not directly referenced, so that their app would run. What is the correct way of packaging the non references dlls?
Attempt #1: Packing all required dll's in a \net35 folder
According to the NuGet documentation regarding the "references" element "If this element is omitted, then the usual behavior applies, which is to reference every assembly in the lib folder."
So, I assume that by using this element it will only include the assemblies specified as references. This does not seem to be the case if I also use a "file" element <file src=*.dll" target="lib\net35" />. If I have an element like this that copies all dll's to the package it results in the assembly that implements this package to reference ALL the assemblies in the \net35 directory. This is not what I want to do. I expected some magic that only the assembly specified in "references" would be an actual be referenced and all the others would remain in the exploded \packages folder and the app would work since all the dlls are located in the same directory. Maybe I'm incorrect....
Attempt #2 Adding as content to project
If I place the unreferenced assemblies into \content\lib instead of lib\net35 when packaged this creates a \lib folder in the project and directly dumps the \content\lib dlls into that project which then forces us to check them into source control. This works, compiles and runs as I want but, I really don't want these stored in the \lib folder of the project.
I am looking for a solution where the project gets the references to "A" and can still run with the to other required assemblies co-located but not directly referenced. It seems like Attempt #1 is the correct path but maybe there is a bug?
FYI, I entered this as a issue with NuGet directly to see it that team has an answer as well.
This was a bug introduced in Nuget 2.1 and was later fixed in Nuget versions 2.2 which was released in December 2012.
Using Attempt #1 in original posting now works correctly.
I don't think your "Attempt 1" is going to work in practice. If you only reference "A". when you build your package, only "A" will be copied (by default) to the output directory. Then, when you distribute the application, only "A" will exist causing errors.
You should have references to all DLLs to make your application run (or come up with another solution that will automatically copy the referenced DLLs to the output directory, but I'm not sure there is much value in not specifying the reference directly). Since you only have a few DLLs, it is probably best to just leave out the references section so that all of the DLLs are referenced automatically from the lib folder.
Related
I added a reference itextsharp.dll to my plugins project, when running my plugins using plugin-registration tool I get this exception:
Could not load file or assembly or one of its dependencies. The system
cannot find the file specified
I tried removing the ref and adding it again, cleaning and then adding it to my project from different places.
Is there restrictions in plugin registration tool about adding non crm dlls? why ? how to solve it?
This is not going to work - you cannot reference external assemblies from CRM plugins that are registered in database. If you want to do this, you will have to merge your external dll with your plugin assembly. You have to remember that adding assembly as reference is not automatically making your referenced assembly available for your base assembly, therefore if you register your plugin assembly in CRM, system is not going to "magically" find somewhere your external assembly (in your case - "itextsharp.dll"). If this is not Online system, you can add your assembly to GAC, or register all your assemblies on Disk instead of database (not recommended approach). If you want to register them in database, you will have to merge everything in one assembly using ILMerge for example.
You can't reference something in a plugin unless it's in the bin of the CRM.
To make it work you need to ILmerge your reference with the plugin. Install this package in your project: MSBuild.ILMerge.Task. Then build. It will work instantly. The package will merge everything in the bin after the build. So make sure every other references are marked "Copy Local = false". Otherwise, you'll have a crazy big assembly.
Finally, Microsoft released a solution for this. You can build a nupgk file and register dependent assemblies.
Here are the white paper and my post about this;
Microsoft : Microsoft White Paper
My summary: Here is the link
I suppose this has been asked many times, but I cant find it.
But what dies . mean in a package lib folder?
They are placeholder files to denote an empty directory. Empty directories are often not well-supported in ZIPs so a file with that name is placed in there to ensure the directory is created.
This is important because the existence of an "empty" net46 folder means that the package supports .NET Framework 4.6, but does not require any assemblies (DLLs) in order to run on that version of .NET. This is most likely because the implementation of the package is in the GAC.
(Eilon Lipton, https://github.com/aspnet/Home/issues/744#issuecomment-123411563)
Scenario:
I just upgraded all the projects in my solution to a new version of PostSharp (shouldn't matter the library, hopefully.) I have around 20 projects in my solution and around half of them originally referenced version 3.0.42 and I just updated them all to the latest version. My solution contains a web app that references projects within this solution, as well as some external dll references. It just so happens that some of those dll references also had dependencies on PostSharp version 3.0.42 and I'm now getting the typical "The located assembly's manifest definition does not match the assembly reference." error from those external dlls when trying to run my app. The web.config has the appropriate bindingdirect in place. Is there any way to have the bindingrediect impact my external dlls as well? Rebuilding them with the latest PostSharp dll is not currently an option.
Using the really easy to follow instructions for building a NuGet package for an assembly with an associated package of sources for the symbol server, found here on David Ebbo's blog "The easy way to publish NuGet packages with sources" I have indeed created a pair of packages: binary and sources.
However, the sources package is incomplete and the reason is that the sources come from two class library .csproj and I used ILMerge to combine the results of the second into the first. (*) So, using the minimal .nuspec described in this post and pointing nuget.exe at the .csproj for the "main" library, the binary package is fine, but of course the sources package only has sources for the "main" library, not also for the library that was ILMerged into the "main" library.
How do I fix this (and get the sources for both projects included in the symbol package but only the binary for the "main" project in the binary package)?
FYI, the actual nuget.exe command line was: nuget pack CommandLineLexing.csproj -Build -Symbols -Properties Configuration=Release.
(*) The reason I'm doing this, in case you're interested, is that the second library is a cut down version of my accumulated "C# utilities" library - you know, a bunch of extension methods and other helpers - cut down so it only has the bare minimum needed for this particular project. And so, since it is cut down, I don't want there to be separate assembly for it which might eventually get confused with the full assembly (having the same name, and not a strong name). So I used ILMerge to put the utilities methods into the main assembly (and also mark them internal).
Not going to be easy I'm afraid.
NuGet symbol packages are simply your regular package, with pdbs, augmented with source files.
Assuming you already know you can get a merged PDB with ILMerge/ILRepack (/debug), that part is probably working file, I'm assuming your issue is that only the source files from the current project gets included.
You could simply post-process your symbol.nupkg (which is a zip), and include the source files from your other (merged) project in the src folder (you can even try that manually).
Though if you run srctool.exe -r MyMergedAssembly.pdb, you'll see different root paths, where usually (for a non-merged project) they all have a common prefix.
It may work, if SymbolSource copes with having multiple path prefixes in your PDB, that I haven't tried.
I also failed to find any documentation irt to their processing of symbol packages. We can assume they use pdbstr.exe tool to update the PDB srcsrv section of the PDB file to redirect the symbol loading to their website, but one can only tell if they support multiple roots by testing it.
If you upload your augmented symbol package to symbolsource, you can download the updated PDB using a URL similar to http://srv.symbolsource.org/pdb/Public/Castle.Core.pdb/4C81FC30DF584853B9869EAB2FA7D9891/Castle.Core.pd_ (then unzip it to a pdb file)
Then you can use both srctool.exe file.pdb and pdbstr.exe -r -s:srcsrv -p:file.pdb to verify their work.
I have created a T4 template that I want to reuse in several projects using NuGet. This template is based on a custom class so I need to distribute a DLL with the template. The DLL is used by the template during generation, but is not used by the project itself so I do NOT want it added to the target project as a reference.
My .nuspec file includes my DLL and places it in the root of the package which will prevent it from creating a reference and everything works fine if I build my package by hand. Unfortunately, I want to use the "nuget pack" command to automatically pick up the version number. When I run this command and reference the project file, it includes my DLL twice, once in the root (as I specified in my nuspec file) and an additional time in the lib folder (along with everything in the bin folder).
How can I automatically build my NuGet package without including any references. It seems there are several solutions, but I can't figure any of them out:
Let nuget include my DLL in the lib folder, but prevent it from creating the reference. I know I can use the <references> section to reference some DLLs and not others, but in this case I don't want it to reference any. If I leave the <references> section blank it is either ignored or I get an error depending on what level I leave blank.
Prevent nuget from including any DLLs automatically and only include the files in the <files> section of the nuspec file. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to build the package from the project file without it including my DLL automatically.
Any thoughts?
If you right-click the DLL, you'll probably see that its "build action" is set to "content". Try setting it to "none".