I'm working on a TFS project with a small team. This project has a bunch of nuget packages installed, but it's for a 4.0 project, and the nuget package manager GUI doesn't even offer the older versions of the packages any longer since their 4.5 equivalents are now being used. In order to allow other team members to compile the project, they need to have the exact versions of the packages. I'd like to check in the entire "packages" folder used by nuget. Is this a good idea? If so, how does one check in the "packages" folder and all its contents since it exists at the solution level? There is no "Include in Solution" option in Visual Studio as there is when you right-click an assembly.
in the past I have also checked in the NuGet packages into version control. With this some problems appeared:
Some packages where not checked into version control when committing from Visual Studio into TFS.
Updating packages became a real problem.
For the first problem I had used the TFS Power Tools. The problem with this solution is that every developer needed to install the Power Tools.
A better solution came up with NuGet 2.7. It introduced package restore. With package restore there's no need to check-in the packages folder. They will be restored during build.
We use an on-prem TFS install with no internet access so we have to check in our package folders or our builds fail. The biggest issue is that VS does not behave consistently when it comes to adding the pending changes for new package files, often times it will ignore the .dll files in the pending changes window, sometimes it adds everything fine.
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We have a library project that we are working on, and in a different project I have the feature branch installed as a Nuget package. Changes are being made on the branch, but version number isn't being updated, so the Nuget package is getting updated, but it has the same name.
I've deleted the Nuget package from my packages folder, so I know I am downloading the latest, and if I manually browse (in the Object Browser) to the dll that I have downloaded to my packages folder, the Object Browser data looks correct.
I've uninstalled and reinstalled the Nuget package in my project, I've turned off all instances of Visual Studio 2017, but still old items are persisting in the Object Browser for my dll that I have installed through Nuget. I am expecting to have build failures because I'm referencing old items, but everything builds successfully, but then when I run the application I am getting run time errors because the old items I am referencing in code no longer exist in the dll that is currently downloaded.
It would be nice if we didn't have to bump version for every build, although we could set up TeamCity to do that automatically, but it would become difficult to maintain all of the extra Nuget packages in our feed.
So, short of just bumping version numbers on the dev Nuget packages, is there any way to clear the cache in Visual Studio 2017 so that the Object Browser updates to reflect the dll that is actually in the packages folder?
I found the problem. In the project where I was testing the library, I had a wpf project and a library project targeting .Net standard. Since the project I was actively working on was wpf I was zoned in on the packages folder in the solution directory, and forgot I was also referencing .Net standards in the same solution which pulls Nuget packages from C:\Users\[username]\.nuget\packages
Because of the project types, Visual Studio had two locations for Nuget packages. One at C:\Users\[username]\.nuget\packages and one at [solution dir]\packages
I updated only the solution directory packages, but apparently Visual Studio 2017 favors the use of the user directory packages, and that is where it was pulling the old API information. After deleting the package from my user directory everything is working as expected.
Our VS2013 solutions contain a solution folder called .nuget, containing the files NuGet.config, NuGet.exe, NuGet.targets. What is the significance of this folder and what uses the files? Is it related to the "enable package restore" feature?
If I install or update a package (via the "Manage NuGet Packages" UI or package manager console), does this involve running the above NuGet.exe, or something else? VS is telling me that the NuGet Package Manager is up to date (via the Extensions and Updates dialog), however the above NuGet.exe is quite old. I've also found a very old NuGet.exe file in C:\Program Files (x86)\NuGet\. What uses the latter, and what are the implications of these exes being out of date?
The reason I ask is that we've been having problems with a couple of solutions over recent weeks. We can't update NuGet packages - the operation fails with the message "Error: An item with the same key has already been added". I'm trying to track down the cause, and wondering if these out of date NuGet.exe files might have something to do with it.
As far as I remember this folder is useless now with the latest nuget extension to Visual Studio. It was used before and was nothing but pain in the ass. I am not 100% sure about 2013, but in 2015 all works fine without it, so my suggestion is to update to the latest available nuget extension version and try to delete the folder, most likely everything will work.
Now packages go to current user folder, and use the config from %AppData%\NuGet\NuGet.config. For NuGet 2.6 or earlier, this setting was available in a project-specific .nuget\nuget.config file.
You can read more about it here.
So nuget is gradually getting better and easy to use without too much thinking of all this "magic" folders and stuff.
I'm training 5 people on using Visual Studio. They've mapped their drives and have "downloaded" the solution from TFS which contains 10 projects. All located at the same depth in TFS folder structure. When the new folks download the solution there's one project that doesn't get the NUGET references even though the Package folder (created by NUGET) is at the same depth of the other 10 projects when viewed in TFS.
We know how to add these manually but is there a way to automatically have VS do it? Why would only one project lose it's reference with the Package Folder right there?
It seems you are still using MSBuild-Integrated package restore approach. If NuGet recognizes that the MSBuild-Integrated package restore approach is enabled for the solution, Automatic Package Restore is skipped.
You need to migrating MSBuild-Integrated solutions to use Automatic Package Restore, then the packages will be restored automatically.
In addition, you need to update you NuGet manager to the latest version in VS Tools--Extensions and Updates. And make sure Visual Studio is configured to 'Allow NuGet to download missing packages' and 'Automatically check for missing packages during build in Visual Studio' in VS Tools--Options--NuGet Package Mnager--General.
To Fix:
Unload all projects first, then right click and select edit project.
Find this line:
<Import Project="$(SolutionDir)\.nuget\nuget.targets" />
Comment it out.
Reload all the projects and compile.
This applies to Nuget api version 2.
Note you may configure all projects for Nuget at the solution level.
The package manager for the solution presents a set of check boxes for every project along with the buttons (Install or Uninstall).
It's very possible that I'm missing something simple because I can't find others on the internet experiencing the same thing.
I'm a team that's new to the use of TFS and Visual Studio Online and we're encountering this problem:
(Using Visual Studio 2015 & 2013)
I used NuGet to add Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.Cors to my newly created WebAPI project (ditto all other NuGet packages)
Did my work and checked in a building solution in to VSO
Co-worker did a Get Latest
His newly-retrieved project won't build and, when we expand the References, the assemblies are marked with a yellow warning icon, indicating that they're missing
We've tried (from the context of the failing project):
Update-Package
Update-Package -reinstall
Manually uninstalling and reinstalling the package in the NuGet UI
Manually adding the entire contents of the Packages directory in to TFS and doing a get latest on that directory as well
Wiping the solution out from his local file system and pulling it down clean
Copying the contents of my {Solution Directory}\Packages to a USB drive, walking it to my co-worker's computer, and copying it to his machine
Only item #6 worked but I'm CERTAIN that this cannot be the right answer.
I guarantee that this is worthy of a dope-slap but what might I be missing?
Thank you to jessehouwing for reminding me that this topic is still out here. He's exactly right on. We removed the Packages folder from source control and that resolved the problem completely.
I've added some libraries to a VS 2010 solution using Nuget (RestSharp, Twilio, etc.). When I pull the same solution down to a new PC from TFS and try to build it, all the references to those assemblies are broken (error "namespace cannot be found..."). Is it necessary for each developer who works on this VS solution for the first time to independently install the same Nuget packages on their PCs?
Thanks,
Jim
As Andrew already have said it's all about the packages' location.
Either you have to check in the entire packages folder with all the packages, or each developer have to install the packages after first checking out. But there is a better way to do this, namely to use NuGet Package Restore - which will automatically install all missing packages when the project is built.
If you use package restore, you only need to check in the repositories.config into your VCS. With TFS you can cloak the entire packages folder except for the repositories.config, so that TFS doesn't annoy with pending checkins for new packages.
Also see this answer for guidance on how to use TFS + NuGet.
No, but you need to be sure the assemblies are all included in the same relative path so Visual Studio can find them. You can include the solution's nuget packages directories, which is where I think it stores a copy of the libraries to be referenced by the project(s).
Incidentally, including said diretories may be effectively the same as "installing the packages". If you include all the files that NuGet uses in its management of packages, NuGet will behave the same as if you had installed them. But you don't need to do the actual package install via NuGet for it to work... or even have NuGet installed in Visual Studio in the first place. It's just a matter of the proper files being where the Visual Studio project files expect them to be.