How configure packages.config to download the highest version

Question

I want to configure packages.config to download the available highest version of a package. How can I do that?

Something like:

<package id="PackageName" version="Highest" ... />

I saw attr "allowedVersions", but it always download the version configured in "version" attr.

Answer 1

How configure packages.config to download the highest version

Just as Ashley and Matt said, it is impossible to do that, because packages.config only allows a single version of a package to be specified.

The simple workaround is using nuget cli to update that package in the pre-build event:

$(YourNuGetPath)\nuget.exe update "$(ProjectDir)packages.config" -Id "<YourPackageId>"

With this build event, Visual Studio will update that package to the latest version before you build your project.

Answer 2

Unfortunately, this isn't possible with NuGet it only allows specific versions. The allowedVersions is used to block someone from going beyond or below a specific version. ie version 1.* is fine but you cannot go to version 2.0.

A typical workaround for something like this is a batch/powershells script which updates the package you want. You could then hook this into a pre-build.