I have the situation where our code base is like so:
/Gui/
/Product1/
/Calc engine/
/Core/
/Product2/
All of these projects are loaded into a Global solution file in Visual Studio.
I want to extract Core to it's own repo and allow different branches of this repo to load different versions of it. I cannot just use references to the binaries as engineers want to be able to debug the core code when running the Products so I have to be able to bring the entire Core codebase in.
Originally, I intended to use git submodules but I am investigating whether Nuget might be a better solution. I have removed /Core/ to it's own repo and created a Nuget package of the Core directory (it contains about 20 different C# projects).
Is there a way I can input this Nuget package into the Global Solution? It would need to put the code into the same directory as it used to rather than a package director.
Is there a way I can input this Nuget package into the Global Solution? It would need to put the code into the same directory as it used to rather than a package director.
You can change the Package Management to "Pakcage.config" in Options\Nuget Package Manager. The package will be stored in solution directory.
and right-click the solution in solution explorer then click "Manage Nuget Packages for Solution"
Related
I'm using TFS for the first time and attempting a build. I'm getting the error:
This project references NuGet package(s) that are missing on this computer. use NuGet Package Restore to download them.
I realize that there are many similar posts on StackOverflow and I've searched through quite a few of them. What I've gathered is that the two boxes under Package Restore in Package Manager Settings should be checked (but that this is also irrelevant now because they're checked by default). I verified that mine were both checked anyway.
The next piece of advice I considered is deleting the /packages folder from the Source Control version of my application. There is no packages folder there OR in my local (pre migration to TFS) version of the application. Instead, there's a ../packages/ folder (up one level) from the application folder. It seems that, at some point, I've opted to store the packages for all of my applications in the same folder? If so, where is this setting and what do I need to change it to either in my local version or in Source Control Explorer?
Thanks!
I have a VS (2015) project. I see there's a "References" section in the Solution Explorer view of my project that includes things like System.Core. I'm assuming these are .dlls that have been added to the project?
I can also right-click on the project file (again in the Solution Explorer) and select the option to "Manage NuGet Packages". I know the NuGet allows me to add external code to my project (e.g. external .dlls and associated files).
What's the difference between adding a reference to my project and adding a .nupkg to my project? Is it just that .nupkg can contain a whole bunch of other things aside from a .dll (e.g. documentation)? Why would I use one or the other?
What's the difference between adding a reference to my project and
adding a .nupkg to my project?
NuGet essentially does not differ from manually adding references, and ultimately adds references to the project. It is a tool that automatically adds assemblies to us and manages them, effectively improving the efficiency of our development projects.
For more details, you can check the document about nuget:
Put simply, a NuGet package is a single ZIP file with the .nupkg extension that contains compiled code (DLLs), other files related to that code, and a descriptive manifest that includes information like the package's version number. Developers with code to share create packages and publish them to a public or private host. Package consumers obtain those packages from suitable hosts, add them to their projects, and then call a package's functionality in their project code. NuGet itself then handles all of the intermediate details.
Because NuGet supports private hosts alongside the public nuget.org host, you can use NuGet packages to share code that's exclusive to an organization or a work group. You can also use NuGet packages as a convenient way to factor your own code for use in nothing but your own projects. In short, a NuGet package is a shareable unit of code, but does not require nor imply any particular means of sharing.
.
Is it just that .nupkg can contain a whole bunch of other things aside
from a .dll (e.g. documentation)?
Yes, NuGet package could include specify files in the package.
Why would I use one or the other?
Nuget provides several additional benefits:
it automatically configures your projects by adding references to the
necessary assemblies, creating and adding project files (e.g.
configuration), etc.
it provides package updates
it does all of this very conveniently
I'm sure that once you use it, you'll realize that it has many benefits.
Check Why use NuGet for more details.
Hope this helps.
Cross platform Xamarin Forms project in Visual Studio and Visual Studio for Mac. The project references Akavache. Akavache has a dependency of akavache.sqlite3. I have made a custom change to a DLL in the akavache.sqlite3 repo and built the DLL locally, and would prefer not to have to switch the whole Akavache package tree over to a custom build for all the Akavache dlls and dependencies. So essentially...would like to continue referencing the NuGet package like normal but "substitute" one DLL on the fly. Or something equivalent like that!
But it needs to be portable too. At first I used a post build copy command to overwrite the "standard" dll that gets put in the TargetDir. That works in the sense that it copies to TargetDir, but for Android copying the DLL into the TargetDir does no good. The DLL is already incorporated into the APK in the TargetDir instead. So it would need to happen some other way. Same basic issue if you used MSBuild instead of a post build command line.
Any thoughts?
FWIW, my current workaround is to copy the DLL over top of the cached NuGet package location. But the problem with this approach is anytime the cache would get cleared/updated it needs to be reapplied. That's also not an obvious step to do, or easily automated, when another developer want to get set up on their machine.
Any .nupkg files are just ZIP files with some metadata, so you can change at the contents. The NuGet Package Explorer should make it a little easier to view the contents.
The NuGet Gallery (e.g. https://www.nuget.org/) has a "Download" link on the left hand side, otherwise just install the package into an empty project and then take a peek.
I've got a packages.config file checked into source control. This specifies the exact version of the Nuget dependency I want. We have our own NuGet repository. We are creating these NuGet packages ourselves.
<packages>
<package id="Dome" version="1.0.0.19" targetFramework="net45" />
<package id="Dome.Dojo" version="1.0.0.19" targetFramework="net45" />
</packages>
These packages have some JavaScript files which when you add the Nuget package as a reference in Visual Studio are copied to the Scripts folder in the project.
I don't want to check these JS files in to source control, I just want to check in the packages.config file.
When my project builds in Team City (or when I build in Visual Studio after a fresh checkout) it doesn't copy the JS files from the NuGet package. There's a question here explaining a similar problem:
NuGet package files not being copied to project content during build
But, the solution in the answer to that question doesn't work for me; that solution uses ReInstall, which is problematic because it can automatically upgrade the version in the packages.config file (say if a dependency is specified as a >=).
The whole point of this is that I want to be able to checkout a revision from my source control, and build that version with the right dependencies AND I want to use the nice packaging features of NuGet. So, I don't want any "automatically update to the latest version during the build."
There's an issue against NuGet (http://nuget.codeplex.com/workitem/2094) about NuGet files not restoring content files. And it's Marked as Closed By Design.
Thinking about how this works a little more, it appears to me (but I'm not 100% sure) that for assemblies NuGet has a different behaviour - it doesn't copy them into the project, instead it references them from the location in the packages folder. It strikes me that js files in the NuGet package should be referenced analogous to how dlls are referenced.
Is there a way to construct a NuGet package so that it references the JS as links in the project (in a similar way to how you can add an existing File as a Link in VS)? And would this solve my problem?
If not then I'll take the advice given by Jeff Handley when closing ticked Nuget Issue 2094 mentioned above:
The option you'd have is to create a new console executable that
references NuGet.Core, and you could build a supplemental package
restore for your own use that copies package contents into the
project.
Writing my own command line tool to copy the contents does seem like I'm pushing water uphill here - am I doing something fundamentally wrong?
The underlying problem here is Visual Studio's relatively poor support of JavaScript projects and JavaScript's lack of built-in module loader.
For C#, when you install a package it adds a reference in your .csproj file to the assembly on disk. When you build, MSBuild knows to copy the thing referenced to the bin directory. Since you aren't checking in your bin directory, this all works great.
Unfortunately for JavaScript, the build system isn't nearly as matured and there aren't well defined guidelines for NuGet to follow. Ideally (IMO), Visual Studio would not run web sites directly from your source directory. Instead, when you built it would copy the JavaScript files, CSS and HTML files to a bin directory from which they would be executed. When debugging, it would map those back to the original JavaScript or TypeScript files (so if you make a change it isn't to a transient file). If that were to happen then there is now a well-defined build step and presumably a well-defined tag for JavaScript files (rather than just "content"). This means that NuGet would be able to leverage that well-defined MSBuild tag and package authors could leverage the NuGet feature to do the right thing.
Unfortunately, none of the above is true. JavaScript files are run in-place, If you did copy them to bin on build Visual Studio would do the wrong thing and editing from a debugger would edit the transient files (not the originals). NuGet therefore has no well-defined place to put files so it leaves the decision up to the package author. Package authors know that the average user is just going to be running directly from source (no build-step) so they dump files into the source folder where they must be checked in to version control.
The entire system is very archaic if you are coming from a modern ecosystem like C# where someone took time to think these things through a bit.
What you could do is create an MSBuild task that, before build, would go through all of your packages, look for content, and copy that content to the desired location. This wouldn't be terribly difficult, though would take a bit of work.
Also, package authors could include a build-task that does this in their package so that before-build all of their content was copied local. Unfortunately, if only some package authors do this then you end up with weird fragmentation where some packages need to be committed to version control and others do not.
When a package is installed into a project, NuGet in fact performs these operations,
Download the package file from source;
Install the package into the so called packages folder, which is $(SolutionDir)\packages by default;
Install the package into the project, which consists of adding references to DLLs, copying content files into the project directory etc.
When a package is restored, only the first two steps are executed. Projects will not be touched by nuget package restore. Which is why the js files in your project will not be "restored".
The only solution for now is to check in the js files in your project.
If you are the owner of the package then you could use the nuget package i've created to be able to have a folder called "Linked" in the package and have a simple Install.ps1 and Uninstall.ps1 (one liners) to add every file in the nuget package's linked folder as existing to the project.
https://github.com/baseclass/Contrib.Nuget#baseclasscontribnugetlinked
I didn't try out how publication treats linked files, the problem is debugging the Project, as the JavaScript files will be missing in the directories.
If you are using git as source control you could try my nuget package which ignores all the nuget content files and automatically restores them before building.
Step by step example in my blog: http://www.baseclass.ch/blog/Lists/Beitraege/Post.aspx?ID=9&mobile=0
I have a solution with two projects:
.NET application
WiX setup project.
I know, that it is possible to refer to project output in WiX source ($(var.WindowsFormsApplication1.TargetFileName)).
Now I've added a NuGet package reference to my .NET application. So, I want to bring NuGet package content into my setup.
Is there any way to do this instead of adding files manually?
I don't believe there is any linkage. I know what nuget is but I haven't used it much because it's more about brining your .NET dependencies into scope then software distribution. Depending on how nuget lays the files down you might be able to do something like $(var.SomeProject.TargetDir)nuget_fetched.dll.
This is assuming that SomeProject uses nuget in such a way that the references are copied locally and available in the Outdir of the project.
I wrote a Resharper live template to cut out a lot of the typing involved in adding the files, but essentially I've just added the files manually. Creating a Wix component per nuget package keep things neat.