NuGet 1.5 Release Notes

NuGet 1.4 Release Notes | NuGet 1.6 Release Notes

NuGet 1.5 was released on August 30, 2011.

Features

Project Templates with Preinstalled NuGet Packages

When creating a new ASP.NET MVC 3 project template, the jQuery script libraries included in the project are actually placed there by installing NuGet packages.

The ASP.NET MVC 3 project template includes a set of NuGet packages that get installed when the project template is invoked. This ability to include NuGet packages with a project template is now a feature of NuGet that any project template can now take advantage of.

For more details about this feature, read this blog post by the developer of the feature.

Explicit Assembly References

Added a new <references /> element used to explicitly specify which assemblies within the the package should be referenced.

For example, if you add the following:

<references>
    <reference file="xunit.dll" />
    <reference file="xunit.extensions.dll" />
</references>

Then only the xunit.dll and xunit.extensions.dll will be referenced from the appropriate framework/profile subfolder of the lib folder even if there are other assemblies in the folder.

If this element is omitted, then the usual behavior applies, which is to reference every assembly in the lib folder.

What is this feature used for?

This feature supports design-time only assemblies. For example, when using Code Contracts, the contract assemblies need to be next to the runtime assemblies that they augment so that Visual Studio can find them, but the contract assemblies should not actually be referenced by the project and should not be copied into the bin folder.

Likewise, the feature can be used to for unit test frameworks such as XUnit which need its tools assemblies to be located next to the runtime assemblies, but excluded from project references.

Added ability to exclude files in the .nuspec

The <file> element within a .nuspec file can be used to include a specific file or a set of files using a wildcard. When using a wildcard, there's no way to exclude a specific subset of the included files. For example, suppose you want all text files within a folder except a specific one.

<files>
    <file src="*.txt" target="content\docs" exclude="admin.txt" />
</files>

Use semicolons to specify multiple files.

<files>
    <file src="*.txt" target="content\docs" exclude="admin.txt;log.txt" />
</files>

Or use a wild card to exclude a set of files such as all backup files

<files>
    <file src="tools\*.*" target="tools" exclude="*.bak" />
</files>

Removing packages using the dialog prompts to remove dependencies

When uninstalling a package with dependencies, NuGet prompts, allowing the removal of a package's dependencies along with the package.

Removing dependent packages

Get-Package command improvement

The Get-Package command now supports a -ProjectName parameter. So the command

Get-Package –ProjectName A

will list all packages installed in project A.

Support for Proxies that require authentication

When using NuGet behind a proxy that requires authentication, NuGet will now prompt for proxy credentials. Entering credentials allows NuGet to connect to the remote repository.

Support for Repositories that require authentication

NuGet now supports connecting to private repositories that require basic or NTLM authentication.

Support for Digest authentication will be added in a future release.

Performance improvements to the nuget.org repository

We've made several performance improvements to the nuget.org gallery to make package listing and searching faster.

Solution dialog project filtering

In the Solution-level dialog, when prompting for what projects to install, we only show projects that are compatible with the selected package.

Package Release Notes

NuGet packages now include support for release notes. The release notes only show up when viewing Updates for a package, so it doesn't make sense to add them to your first release.

Release Notes within the Updates tab

To add release notes to a package, use the new <releaseNotes /> metadata element in your NuSpec file.

.nuspec &ltfiles /> improvement

The .nuspec file now allows empty <files /> element, which tells nuget.exe not to include any file in the package.

Bug Fixes

NuGet 1.5 had a total of 107 work items fixed. 103 of those were marked as bugs.

For a full list of work items fixed in NuGet 1.5, please view the [NuGet Issue Tracker for this release](http://nuget.codeplex.com/workitem/list/advanced?keyword=&status=All&type=All&priority=All&release=NuGet%201.5&assignedTo=All&component=All&sortField=Summary&sortDirection=Descending&page=0).

Bug fixes worth noting:

  • [Issue 1273](http://nuget.codeplex.com/workitem/1273): Made packages.config more version control friendly by sorting packages alphabetically and removing extra whitespace.
  • [Issue 844](http://nuget.codeplex.com/workitem/844): Version numbers are now normalized so that Install-Package 1.0 works on a package with the version 1.0.0.
  • [Issue 1060](http://nuget.codeplex.com/workitem/1060): When creating a package using nuget.exe, the -Version flag overrides the <version /> element.