I want a custom directory structure for my Content in my MVC project for example:
\Content
--\js
--\css
--\img
Is it possible to tell a NuGet package to install scripts in the Content\js folder? For example the jQuery package so that the jquery-1.6.js file is installed in the Content\js folder?
A workaround is to use the Nuget Package Explorer and download the package you want into that. You can then edit the folders within the package using Package Explorer to suit your taste and save it into your own Nuget repository. This can be a file system folder or you can get more sophisticated here: Hosting Your Own NuGet Feeds.
Of course this means that you have to keep the packages in your private repository up to date. Clearly if you have a lot of packages to deal with this could become a problem. However it seems quite likely that a future release of Nuget will deal with the issue of local feeds because it's an issue for companies that 'restrict which third-party libraries their developers may use' as mentioned in the Hosting your own NuGet feeds reference above.
I believe the answer to that is "No." There are, however, some references to be able to set the root folder NuGet installs things into: http://nuget.codeplex.com/workitem/215 (see the comments)
How jQuery gets installed is determined by the package producer, which is the jQuery team in your case.
Where the jQuery package gets installed is up to you.
However, the where can only be adjusted in terms of the location of the installed package ($(SolutionDir)\packages folder is the default), and the target project where you install it into. From then on, the package producer takes over and decides where each piece of the package content ends up.
There are some good conventions for ASP.NET MVC, such as a Content folder, a Scripts folder, an App_Start folder (for WebActivator), etc. Think about the risks and extra effort involved of trying to move away from these conventions. Do they outweigh the benefits?
Now if you really want to use your own conventions, you could create your own package with your desired content structure and put the jQuery scripts where you want them in the consuming projects.
This means you would be using your own package with that specific version of jQuery. You just have to be careful to respect the licensing policy of the original package, and not to break any specific installation steps or requirements from the original package, which is fairly easy to do if you manually start changing package structure.
The answer to this is "no" because the "Content" folder is one of the Nuget's convention folders. However, if you rename your Content folder to, for instance, public and then have Nuget pack your public/js folder then when you bring the package in it will extract the files to the public/js folder.
Since I started to use Nuget I switched to using public for my public content instead of Content and rather use Content for files that I want to bring in untouched like source files (see here one usage of Content).
Related
I'm having issues creating a nuget package for a repo I've recently taken over (with no helpful input from the previous owner). The problem I'm having, is the VS nuget package creation doesn't seem to have any clear way to include other projects into the package. The way the package was built previously, was there's a base nuget package (package), that also included several other dlls from package.iOS, package.Droid, etc... But I can't figure out how to built it that way. The only other solution I can think of (which if I'm reading the nuget documentation on Microsoft correctly, it's the more correct way) is to create a separate nuget package for each of the projects, instead of including them all in the base package.
Please advise.
I am fully comfortable with creating multiple more specific nuget packages, but the people using this library are used to only downloading the base one, and it having everything they need.
I've looked into the documentation, and as far as I was able to tell, I could include referenced projects, but the base project doesn't rely on any of the other ones.
Just for reference, the project structure is similar to:
project
project.forms
project.iOS
project.Droid
project.macOS
project.Uwp
Where previous versions of the nuget built from project also included project.iOS, project.Droid, project.macOS, and project.Uwp, which in turn, depend on project.
Logically, to me, it seems that each of the project.{}s should probably have their own package, as they all may not be needed in someone's utilization of the package. Just wanted to see if there was an easy way to continue existing patterns without a load of work.
Scratch that
Turns out I can't make individual packages out of the project.{} projects through VS.
Okay, found it, just had to make a .nuspec file, and reference that file in the nuget pack command.
In the .nuspec file, you need a <files> node with a <file src="...thing.dll" target="lib\..." /> for each of the dll's you're needing in your project. Simple as that. Just wish there were a way to do it in the VS interface, instead of having to use a .nuspec file.
So far I thought that using Nuget to add the AngularJS modules is the way to go. But nuget adds the packages to whatever directory it is configured to. For example it adds the angularjs.core package to my main Scripts folder. It adds the angular-ui-router module again to my Scripts folder. But the angular-ui-bootstrap module is added to Scripts\angular-ui. If I am to use Nuget and keep the packages up to date, etc. I need to stick with this, which is inconsistent. Not to speak that I want to have all my angularjs scripts in a Scripts/vendors folder.
Can I somehow work around this problem or just ditch Nuget for this?
I've got a solution in which I'm trying to create a 2nd executable. These two executable share most of the same files, but have a few different ones including resources and application icon, etc.
I created the 2nd project, and added the items as links.:
Right-click "Add existing item",
Browse to it,
Click the "Add" drop-down and select "Add as link".
Adding as links means that it just references the other file in the other folder and does not copy it.
Now, when I tried to commit my project VisualSVN / SVN tried to do an SVN add on those files in the logical path they belong to resulting in lots of errors that the file was not found. It caused the entire commit to fail and was a major pain in the ass.
Is there a good way I can add links to files without side-effects? All the files I'm trying to link to are already in the same repo.
Update
Maybe I should add more information about what I'm trying to accomplish because I'm open to any suggestion which helps me accomplish it.
I have a project structure something like this... Or I want it to be like this...
MyProject
/Common
BusinessDataObjects (svn:external)
ControlsLibrary (svn:external)
OtherCommmonLib1 (svn:external)
OtherCommonLib2 (svn:external)
/Modules
Module1
Module2
Module3
...
Application1
Application2 (shares all App1's files, except different .resx, icon, name, other minor differences)
SetupProject1 (includes app1 and certain module dlls)
SetupProject2 (includes app2 and certain module dlls)
The application is basically an empty shell (using Prism) which loads the modules installed in a /modules folder. I want both applications to be almost identical, but I want them to have different names and a different icon. I thought I could accomplish this by adding the files from the first project to the second as a link, and simply swapping a resource file which included the strings for the application window title, About dialog, etc. But then VisualSVN or whatever tried to SVN Add those items which I wasn't expecting.
I need to be able to develop the modules and the application's shell project. They are not stable in any way yet. I just want them to near copies of each other but with minor naming differences. I figured with two application projects, I could have two setup projects that included the output from each application and whichever modules are supposed to be included in that version of the software program.
I was trying to make this as foolproof as possible, and I'd like to avoid having to update external references to the same project. (I'm a bit confused about that as well, would I svn:external to the same repo?) That doesn't sound good, but this was my main idea on how to create two almost identical apps. I'm not sure how else I'll do it if I can't get my version control software to behave.
I had suggested oringally we only have one version of the software and have certain modules be upgrades, but there are some good reasons they can't really do that.
When you add a file to a Visual Studio project with "Add as link" it's expected that the file is not copied to the project's folder.
VisualSVN considers status of items in your working copy, even files which are not included in the current solution. However a linked file does not exist in a working copy, thus can't be tracked. It's out of version-control.
Since the files you attempt to link are already version-controlled (i.e. they exist in the SVN repository) it makes sense to use Externals Definitions (svn:externals property) to link them.
Also see TortoiseSVN Manual; it's description of svn:externals is really good.
You don't mention your environment. However, you mention you have a Solution. I'm assuming it's VisualStudio you're using.
Have you tried AnkhSVN which is a Source Control Provider for Subversion for VisualStudio? AnknSVN integrates into VisualStudio much like Microsoft's native version control systems of Visual SourceSafe and TeamFoundation. I believe you can use AnknSVN to do the linking you want since these links are really internal VisualStudio structures and not actual symbolic or hard links like you find in a Unix system.
I usually avoid links (I believe they're called Junctions on Windows) because they simply don't work across operating systems. Instead, you can use one of the following methods:
Use your build system to copy the files, or create the required links rather than your version control system.
Use svn:externals to do the linking. Careful with this because svn:externals are pointers to a Subversion URL.
For example, if I setup http://foo.com/svn/trunk/proj1 to have a svn:externals link to the head of http://foo.com/svn/trunk/proj2, and I create a tag for Project 1 by copying http://foo.com/svn/trunk/proj1 to http://foo.com/svn/tags/REL-1.2/proj1, that project is still pointing to the head of the trunk of proj2. Changes in Project 2 will change what I thought was a stable tag. Always point your svn:external to a stable revision.
I have no experience with VisualSVN, we use Ankhsvn which does not have that problem.
http://ankhsvn.open.collab.net/
The way I am going to do is create a SolutionItems directory inside my solution and physically copy all referenced third-party dll files into that folder, then I change reference to that local copy inside the SolutionItems directory. But the question is: does it worth the trouble of manage it manually?
I would think it is a good idea as it is dependency for my application. Without including the dll file, the whole solution wouldn't be able to run inside Visual Studio if the machine don't have the required DevExpress version installed. My Deployment Project will handle dependency correctly regardless, as far as the reference been setup properly.
On the other hand, because DevExpress will normally automatically add references, and I can using Project converter to update version of DevExpress. So without reference to the Local Copy inside solution, it is pretty much working out of the box whenever I am changing reference, or change between DevExpress versions. If instead, I am managing my local copy, I am create more work for myself to maintain the reference and physical copy of dll files. Should I keep it simple as it is now, base on the assumptions that whoever working with this application will need have a copy of DevExpress installed?
We had a similar problem where I work. 5 devs, 1 svn and mulitple copies of DevExpress dlls floating around. We tried at first maintaining a local copy (updated manually) as you describe, this did not work well for us. So yes, the easiest thing to do (in my experience) is require everyone who works on the project have a copy of DevExpress installed.
I could use some advice.
I'm in the process of adopting subversion, and I'm trying to put some existing Visual Studio 2010 projects into a repository. I have the current version of AhnkSvn.
The projects I have are organised as;
VS2010_projects\Project_A
VS2010_projects\Project_B
VS2010_projects\Project_C
VS2010_projects\Common_code
Where Project_A, Project_B and Project_C may all refer to one or more files in "Common_Code"
In visual studio, these files will have been added using "add as link".
There is no actual project in "Common_code" just a collection of useful code files, which we're likely to re-use in different projects.
(If we have a module or class which is re-used in various projects, then we often keep a single master copy in 'common-code', and link to it.)
Visual Studio has no problem with this.
When I add any of the actual projects to subversion, all of their own files are added just fine, but the linked files are ignored.
(And as a consequence, if I then get a working copy of those files, then it's just the project files which get handled, I won't get a copy of the linked files.)
If I right click on any of the linked files, I the only subversion options I get are to refresh their status or to select the working folder.
I was wondering what the correct way to handle this situation was ?
Any advice would be much appreciated
Thanks !
Robert
if I understand your question correctly then I think SVN is acting in the desired way. A linked file is merely a reference to another file. That reference exists only in the .csproj file which is checked in. It would not make sense to have two copies of the same file in source control, and it could lead to versioning issues. The first time you checkout your repository doing a build on your projects should copy the files from Common_code to the places that they're linked.
As an aside we've had alot of random issues with .csproj linked files and SVN, and so try to avoid linked files where possible. A better way to re-use files across projects is obviously just to embed them in a library and then reference that library. This should work fine with the exception of certain files like Javascript/CSS.
Also you may want to check out SVN externals, a workmate mentioned this can be used to share common libraries between multiple projects, although as a disclaimer I haven't tried this myself and can't comment on the merits or drawbacks of the approach.
Thanks for the advice, I actually did something similar to your suggestion.
I didn't want to make a full blown library, but I did make up a dummy project, and put my shared files into that.
Then I added the dummy project to the repository.
AhnkSvn now seems to be satisfied that the linked files are under subversion control, and seems to handle them just fine.
(I haven't added any reference to the dummy project to my existing projects - they just use the linked files as before - but now AhnkSvn shows me their status, and allows me to get the latest version, and commit changes.)
I can see the case for having a proper library - but that would have meant modifying a large body of existing projects. This approach lets me get up and running with Subversion without requiring those changes first.