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We recently added a few dependencies to our project using NuGet. To keep the binaries out of the version control system, I enabled the package restore feature and added the resulting .nuget folder to the repository. Also the project with the dependencies got the RestorePackages option set to true, and an Import-tag for the nuget.targets within the .nuget folder.

So that all works well on my machine with NuGet installed and the package restore feature enabled in my VS settings. However when I want to use this setup to install the dependencies on other machines I run into a few problems.

I was under the impression that one advantage of including the nuget.exe would allow me to use this on machines that do not necessarily have NuGet installed. However, after reading the article on consent I think the reason it actually fails is that those machines do not have the package restore feature enabled in their settings – obviously as they technically do not even know about NuGet.

What is the preferred way to enable package restore on machines that do not have NuGet installed? Is not having NuGet installed actually a valid option other than for build servers?

Or ideally, is there a way to enable package restore by default from the solution if NuGet isn’t installed itself and as such the setting could not be set by the user? (I actually could think of a setup-script that creates a NuGet.Config to %AppData&\NuGet)

poke
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3 Answers3

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Try this:

Install-Package NuGetEnablePackageRestore

Or check the contents of the package (unzip it), you'll find some interesting stuff there that will help you out (e.g. there's a way to set an environment variable from within MSBuild). You can download the package within the browser after logging into NuGet.

Xavier Decoster
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  • Thanks, this is basically what I did now. Comparing the contents of that package with the generated `.nuget` contents is a bit disappointing as all that is changed is the `RestoreCommand`-tag which sets the environment variable before running NuGet. But I used that idea for now in our project and it seems to work fine. At first I tried to make it with a condition based on the existance of `%AppData%\NuGet` but that gets created with the included `NuGet.exe` as well, so that won’t work. In the end I just enabled it permanently and will think of a different solution if I run into any problems. – poke Aug 07 '12 at 13:12
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"Or ideally, is there a way to enable package restore by default from the solution if NuGet isn’t installed itself and as such the setting could not be set by the user?"

The alternative to install NuGet and enabling consent through the Settings is to set the following environment variable :

set EnableNuGetPackageRestore=true
Alexandre Dion
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  • Thanks, but ideally I don’t want any manual steps to be done on the developer’s machine. So setting the environment variable manually is not really better than installing NuGet and enabling the consent via the settings. Everything should work out of the box. – poke Aug 07 '12 at 13:09
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If EnableNuGetPackageRestore (mentioned by Alexandre Dion) variable used as emmited Property for Msbuild script (I strongly suspect it work this way, but cant check right now) - you can tune up your projects or sln to set this additional property to true.

Anyway, according to this you should have at least nuget.exe as console manager for each dev. Otherwise you cant fetch referenced nuget packages.

Alexey Shcherbak
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