How to get NuGet options in Visual Studio 2017 Community?

Question

I am struggling with creating NuGet packages. I am using Visual Studio 2017 Community edition.

I have seen a couple of videos that show a "Pack" option on the menu when right-clicking the project in Solution Explorer. However, I do not have that option. Is this one of the features in the other (non-Community) versions of Visual Studio? I believe I have also seen a "create NuGet package on build" option mentioned somewhere. I cannot find that either.

I have tried various ways of using nuget, dotnet, and msbuild from the command line(s), but haven't had much success. Very frustrating.

Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

If you really want to use Visual Studio, I would recommend installing an extension that helps you with that problem. For example, this one . The options people have in videos depend on the extensions they have installed. For you, it is the same.

Alternatively, just use the command-line tooling for this as explained here or for .NET Core here or here .

Answer 2

dotnet/msbuild pack is only available for SDK-style projects, but I believe works for all versions of Visual Studio, as well as on the command line. .NET Core introduced these SDK-style projects, which can be identified by <Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk"> . If your project ( .csproj if it's a C# project) doesn't have the Sdk property or import Microsoft.NET.Sdk in either of the two other ways , then it's not an SDK style project and doesn't support packing in this way. Another obvious difference between the two styles of projects is that SDK projects are only a few lines long from the new project template and don't list files in the project, whereas old style projects are typically a full screen long, even from a new project template with only a single class file, and it does list individual files in the project. If you want to continue with this project type, you'll need to use nuget.exe pack and you'll probably want to create a .nuspec file to define some of the package metadata.

However, using SDK style projects is the future, it just takes time for all of Microsoft's existing project types to migrate. It's much simpler to use, so personally I would avoid old style projects unless you're using a project type (like ASP.NET, not ASP.NET Core) that doesn't support it.

All of this is confusing for anyone new to the .NET ecosystem. My recommendation is 1. when you install Visual Studio, when making your workload selections, make sure in the component list that .NET Core is selected, whatever the newest version of .NET Core that is available at the time of installation. When creating a new project in Visual Studio, always select the .NET Core version, or .NET Standard version of any new project template, even if you want to target the (Windows) .NET Framework, in which case you edit the .csproj and change <TargetFramework>netstandard2.0</TargetFramework> to <TargetFramework>net45</TargetFramework> , although I would recommend multi-targeting possible by adding as to the element name and using a semi-colon separated list: <TargetFrameworks>net45;netstandard2.0</TargetFrameworks> . So, avoid the "Class Library (.NET Framework)" template, instead use "Class Library (.NET Standard)" and then change the target if you have to.

Answer 3

@zivkan led me down the right path. Changing my project types to .Net Core from .Net Framework made all the options I mentioned in my original post available. No extensions were needed.

My .Net Core class library project now has the Pack and Publish options available on the project's context menu. In addition, there is a another tab (Package) on the project properties page. On that page there is a "Generate NuGet package on build" option along with version, name, tags and other properties.

I have done much .Net framework development, but have been ignoring .Net Core and the newer options. I guess I need to dig in and learn about them.