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 my project set to Allow NuGet to download missing packages as well as Automatically check for missing packages during build in Visual Studio. In my solution folder, there is a packages folder and it contains everything that I need for my project. However the references to them in the project are still broken.
I have tried removing the references and adding them with NuGet, but NuGet says the item is already in the project (it is in the packages folder) even though the reference is there and the project can't build. The only way that I can seem to get around it is to manually go into each of the packages in the packages folder and select every .dll.
Is there a better way to do this?
Open package manager console and type:
Update-Package -Reinstall
This should refresh all your references based on each project's packages.config file.
In my projects folder root, I have a packages folder that is utilized by various web applications at C:/Projects/packages. All application references that point to this folder work fine.
However, with a new application, when I pulled the latest code, all references expect the packages folder to live at the solution level - C:/Projects/CompanyName/Apps/SolutionFolder/packages.
When I pull latest, this folder is not included (it's never checked in to subversion) so I have missing references when I first open a project up. However, when I try to build, it doesn't pull the latest for these packages and of course, doesn't compile. When I run Update-Package -reinstall, it will update the packages IN C:/Projects/packages, and it WILL NOT create the packages folder at the solution level.
I've confirmed that I have the packages.config in each project in the solution and that each project expects that the assemblies will be housed in the packages folder at that level. What's weird is that after I run the -reinstall, these hintpaths in the project files will actually point to the C:/Projects/packages folder and the assembly references will resolve...but only for 3rd party packages and NOT for our in-house built packages.
Does anyone know why this occurs? The solution has been to get a copy of the packages folder that a coworker is using and paste that into the solution folder but that doesn't solve the problem if it occurs again.
Per #MattWards link I checked the nuget.config file in appdata, which specified this C:/project.packages path. After removing this setting and building my solution, the packages folder was added to the solution level and everything worked.
I've got problem with version of dependency that I set manually.
Note: I use Automatic restore within Visual Studio.
When I set Version="1.3.12.5" for my dependency in packages.config I expect that restore will install package and it will be referenced in next build I trigger. But it is not true. Package is installed and placed in packages directory but build does not use this downloaded packages (as csproj is not changed automatically).
Do you know possible scenarios to workaround this problem?
I tried to use Proget Client Tools but it turned out that it is not possible to use local directory feed with this. I need local and remote feeds support also, so it is additional requirement.
So, paraphrasing my question is...
How to easily change referenced version of package without touching csproj? (which is hard to edit in visual studio) Editing version twice (one in packages.config, two in csproj) is also an overkill.
Remember Package Restore simply downloads the package to the packages folder. It does not update project references as NuGet expects that the package had previously been installed. It's simply downloading the missing package files.
Package Restore is not a replacement for Install-Package. You can specify a specific version when installing. This will add the project references properly.
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