Embed vs reference my dependencies: Best practices for .NET/NuGet package?

Question

I'm providing a C#/.NET class library to clients within my company as a NuGet package. My library depends upon some other 3rd-party libraries (eg Newtonsoft's excellent Json.NET ).

I'm assuming that the standard way NuGet works is that my package would only include references to other NuGet packages I depend upon. The client's Developer Studio will automatically download them when they install my NuGet package in their project.

Question #1:

Can I be certain that Developer Studio will download the versions of those NuGet packages that I was building against and not the 'latest' versions?

Question #2:

Will it cause problems if their project also uses a 3rd-party library that I'm using (like Json.NET), especially if they are using a different version? Does this 'just work', or do I need to do something about this?

Apologies if this is spelled out somewhere, but I've not been able to find specific answers to these questions.

Answer 1

That's clearly laid out in the Nuspec Reference

Specifically:

Specifying Dependencies

Starting from version 2.0, package dependencies can be specified to vary according to the framework profile of the target project. The element contains a set of elements. Each group contains zero or more element and a target framework attribute. All dependencies inside a group are installed together if the target framework is compatible with the project's framework profile.

  <dependencies> <group> <dependency id="RouteMagic" version="1.1.0" /> </group> <group targetFramework="net40"> <dependency id="jQuery" /> <dependency id="WebActivator" /> </group> <group targetFramework="sl30"> </group> </dependencies> 

Where version is:

The range of versions acceptable as a dependency. Typically this is just a version number which represents a minimum version. However a more explicit version range syntax is supported.

( update : updated references to more recent version of nuget)