Is it possible to add a NuGet reference to an existing VS project (csproj or jsprox) using some command line tool?
I would need a functionality like package manager console offers using Install-Package command:
PM>Install-Package
This is not supported with NuGet.exe. With NuGet.exe you can download the NuGet packages based on what is in the packages.config file. You can also update NuGet packages and have their references updated in the project file by using NuGet.exe update. However you cannot use NuGet.exe to install the NuGet package so it adds the required references to the project file.
It is supported with Paket however if you use Paket then you would need to switch to using Paket for all NuGet packages since it has its own way of referencing the NuGet packages which does not include using the packages.config file. It also does not support PowerShell scripts.
I looked at installing NuGet Packages from the command line outside of Visual Studio using SharpDevelop and a set of PowerShell commands. This was a proof of concept but is not supported and requires most of SharpDevelop to be available.
If you are using .NET Core there is now a way to achieve this using the dotnet CLI.
dotnet add package EntityFramework
See Steve Smith's blog post for more information.
Related
I'm using the PackageReference package management format available in VS2017 rather than packages.config.
The Nuget restore command works fine, however, the Nuget update seems to be searching from projects that have a packages.config even though I'm explicitly providing the .sln file
The command I'm using is
\NuGet\4.0.0\x64\nuget.exe update "Test.sln"
The output I get is
Scanning for projects...
MSBuild auto-detection: using msbuild version '15.3.409.57025' from 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\MSBuild\15.0\bin'.
Found 0 projects with a packages.config file.
Does anyone know if this should work or some other way of forcing my packages to update?
Does anyone know if this should work or some other way of forcing my packages to update?
At the moment, NuGet CLI does not support automatic package updates to the the new .NET Core .csproj format, you can refer to the below GitHub issue for detail:
https://github.com/NuGet/Home/issues/4358
If you want to force your packages to update, you can use the command line:
dotnet add package PackageName --version <version>
to update the package to the version that you specify. See the Github issue 4361 for detail.
Update to the Comment:
If you want to update to the latest version (without having to specify a specific version) of your nuget packages, you could use above command line without the option "--version":
dotnet add package PackageName
Besides, you can also use the command line update-package from the package manager console to update the package.
I modified a solution and deleted one of the .csproj files and instead packaged the .dlls into a NuGet package. Then I added the package to the two other .csproj files that reference the .dlls. All was good - it builds locally, but I can't get it to build on the build server. When I look at the code gotten out of TFS for the build I see that the packages.config for both projects have the correct reference to the NuGet package, but when I open the solution in VS the references have little yellow exclamation marks next to them because they're broken references. The only way I can get it to build is to open the NuGet CMI and execute Uninstall-package package-name and the Install-Package package-name. Then the references are good. When I look in the packages.config of the main project it contains the correct reference to the Package. So I've given up on getting TFS to correctly grab the package, but since Install-Package and Uninstall-Package are CMI commands only I can't automate that (or can I)? Does anyone know if a way that I could automate that to happen after the source is pulled from TFS but before the build?
The yellow exclamation marks issue should be related to the reference path. When you download the source from TFS to another location, the system cannot find the references as the original reference path changed.
So, you need to reinstall the package, you can use the NuGet command line in the Package Manager Console:
Update-Package -reinstall
since Install-Package and Uninstall-Package are CMI commands only I can't automate that (or can I)? Does anyone know if a way that I could automate that to happen after the source is pulled from TFS but before the build?
The simple answer is you can not automate that. You can use the command Install-Package and Uninstall-Package to reinstall the packages to your project in the Package Manager Console, but it seems impossible to automate that. Please forgive me for the lengthy explanation below.
First, we need to know the different the operation Install packages between NuGet CLI and Package Manager, although NuGet CLI and Package Manager both support the operation Install packages.
The operation Install packages on NuGet CLI:
Obviously, NuGet will not reinstall the references when you using the Install-packages operation on the NuGet CLI, just download the package to the packages folder. See NuGet CLI referenceļ¼
The install command does not modify a project file or packages.config;
in this way it's similar to restore in that it only adds packages to
disk but does not change a project's dependencies.
Conversely, operation Install packages on Package Manager:
Installs a package and its dependencies into a project.
If you want to automate that, you have to do this operations via NuGet CLI. Since Install package on NuGet CLI will not modify the reference of project, so we could not automate the operation install package to update the reference of the project.
Besides, we also do not recommend you automate that. Once you have automate that, NuGet execute the uninstall/install operations every time before you build the project. We only need to do an uninstall/install the operation after get the project from TFS. Even we do not need to do this operation if the references of the project are not broken after NuGet restore. So according to the reference of the project to determine whether or not to use an command:
Update-Package -reinstall
in the Package Manager Console should be the best choice.
How to update nuget packages without package manager of visual studio, if the projects referenced in solution have different nuget package folders, then updating nuget packages from solution becomes tedious job. You need to update nuget packages per project. Is there a way to update nuget packages without using visual studio?
To update the nuget packages in solution, you can create a batch file with multiple commands or can execute command like mentioned below using command prompt:
Open command prompt and change the folder where Nuget.Exe is present.
NuGet.Exe Update [Solution File] -Id [Nuget package Id]
There are more switches to Nuget.Exe Update switch, like you can specify the nuget source. Make changes as required and you can successfully update nuget packages without opening the visual studio.
I can successfully restore package even if the option "enable nuget package restore" is not switched on in the project. Plus it generates additional files within my solution.
With the latest version of NuGet (2.7 or above) you do not need to use the Enable NuGet Package Restore menu option if you do not want to.
The latest version of NuGet, when installed in Visual Studio, will automatically restore any missing packages when your build your project. It does this without needing to add any new files to your solution and does not use MSBuild. It is now the recommended way of restoring NuGet packages.
You can also restore from the command line using NuGet with a command line similar to:
nuget restore YourSolution.sln
I'm working on a NuGet package that installs a bunch of content - views, scripts, CSS files - into a web application, and trying to improve the change-compile-test cycle. I have two projects - the framework itself ("Package") and the demo web app that consumes it ("Website")
What I need to do as part of the Visual Studio build process is:
(as part of Package post-build) Nuget pack Package.nuspec -OutputDirectory ..\pkg\
(as part of Website pre-build) Nuget uninstall Package
(as part of Website pre-build) Nuget install package -source ..\pkg\
The problem is - there doesn't seem to be any command-line equivalent of doing Uninstall-Package from the NuGet Package Manager console. Am I missing something?
No there isn't currently.
Also, nuget.exe install doesn't really install anything. What nuget.exe install really does is nuget.exe restore: it restores the extracted package in the output directory. It doesn't run the PowerShell hooks (e.g. install.ps1) and it doesn't modify any target project (as there's none being targeted).
There is a way but using neither Visual Studio nor NuGet.exe. Using a custom build of SharpDevelop you can install and uninstall NuGet packages from the command line and have their PowerShell scripts run.
This custom build of SharpDevelop and its NuGet addin allows you to run the commands, such as Install-Package and Uninstall-Package, from PowerShell but outside of Visual Studio.
The limitations are that it needs SharpDevelop to be available and it also does not support any PowerShell scripts that are Visual Studio specific.