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I have a library which I want to create a Nuget package for which has the following situation:

The library compiles to different versions:

  • Silverlight 4.0
  • .Net 4.0
  • .net 3.5
  • Windows Phone

Luckily all of these platforms are supported by Nuget so in the lib folder of my package I can create sub folders for each of these platforms and Nuget will do the right thing when the library is installed on any of those platforms.

The problem is I have some other dependencies which differ by platform. For example: On the Windows Phone I need to include a 3rd party zip library (wpSharpLibZip) but this dependency does not exist on the other platforms which have zipping utilities included.

Is this scenario supported in Nuget? I want to be able to have the wpSharpLibZip dependency to only exist on the Windows Phone platform. Do I have to just create a separate package per platform?

If this feature doesn't exist I could imagine it being implemented something like:

Changing the section of the package manifest to support:

<dependencies>
   <dependency id="Newtonsoft.Json" version="3.5.8" />
   <dependency id="wpSharpLibZip">
       <platform>Silverlight 4.0 - Windows Phone</platform>
   </dependency>
</dependencies>

Or another way could be to allow for a seperate .nuspec file inside of each platform folder (under the lib folder) which could spell out platform specific dependencies.

Luke Foust
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1 Answers1

4

Separate package for each different dependency set. Dependencies are package level. NuGet doesn't support this scenario at this time and may not for awhile if at all.

UPDATE: Dependencies have groups since NuGet 2.x, so you can set dependencies this way. See https://docs.nuget.org/create/nuspec-reference#specifying-dependencies-in-version-2.0-and-above for details 

<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>
ferventcoder
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