Include referenced project in nuget package

Question

I have a solution with 3 projects (using netstandard1.4). Project A contains shared code. Project B is a server side library and project C is a client side library. Project B and C include project A as project reference.

Now I want to publish project B and project C as a nuget package.

The Problem is the nuget packages for project B and C do not contain the code / dll from project A. It looks like project B and C want project A also as a nuget package.

How can I pack the project B and C as standalone nuget packages? I don't want to publish project A as a nuget package.

Answer 1

How can I pack the project B and C as standalone nuget packages? I don't want to publish project A as a nuget package.

Since you are using .NET Standard 1.4 , you could not use the direct way " dotnet pack " to include the project references. Because dotnet pack will pack only the project and not its P2P references, you can get the detail info from the document dotnet-pack and the issue on GitHub :

NuGet dependencies of the packed project are added to the .nuspec file, so they're properly resolved when the package is installed. Project-to-project references aren't packaged inside the project. Currently, you must have a package per project if you have project-to-project dependencies.

If you want to pack project B and C contain the code / dll from project A, you can use NuGet.exe to create the package B and C by adding project reference assemblies to the .nuspec file:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<package >
  <metadata>
    <id>TestProjectB</id>
    <version>1.0.0</version>
    <authors>Tester</authors>
    <owners>Tester</owners>
    <requireLicenseAcceptance>false</requireLicenseAcceptance>
    <description>Package description</description>
    <releaseNotes>Test sample for netstandard package.</releaseNotes>
    <copyright>Copyright 2017</copyright>
    <tags>Tag1 Tag2</tags>
  </metadata>
<files>
    <file src="bin\Debug\netstandard1.4\TestProjectB.dll" target="lib\netstandard1.4\TestProjectB.dll" />
    <file src="bin\Debug\netstandard1.4\TestProjectA.dll" target="lib\netstandard1.4\TestProjectA.dll" />
</files>
</package>

In this case, you can pack the project B and C as standalone nuget packages, do not need publish project A as a nuget package.