I'm trying to push and then consume a NuGet package using GitHub packages (documentation here). As a newcomer, after experimenting a bit I managed to push a sample NuGet package to a public GitHub repository.
Yet, I'm missing the final part, i.e. consume the package from some Visual Studio project. When I try to add the package, I first get a "Restoring packages for..." notification, and then the error "Unable to load the service index for source... : The input is not a valid Base-64 string as it contains a non-base 64 character, more than two padding characters, or an illegal character among the padding characters".
So, it seems my endpoint for NuGet is not configured as expected, yet I could not find a clear direction about this. To help newbies like me starting with GPR, and detail my procedure so that readers can spot my errors, here is what I learnt until now:
Setup
Before using GPR, you must create a token in your GitHub account.
Creating and Publishing Packages
- set the
RepositoryUrlandRepositoryTypeproperties in your.csprojfile to your target repository URL andgitrespectively, e.g.:
<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
<PropertyGroup>
<!-- omissis ... -->
<RepositoryUrl>https://github.com/USERNAME/PROJECTNAME</RepositoryUrl>
<RepositoryType>git</RepositoryType>
</PropertyGroup>
</Project>
- open the GitHub bash in your project folder, and create the package like this:
dotnet pack NAME.csproj -c Release -p:IncludeSymbols=true -p:SymbolPackageFormat=snupkg
where -c selects the configuration. See creating snupkg for more, and the dotnet pack reference.
- open the GitHub bash in your project folder, and publish like this:
dotnet nuget push "bin/Release/NAME.1.0.0.nupkg" --source "github".
Note: you first need to register (once) the GPR feed with:
nuget sources add -name "github" -Source https://nuget.pkg.github.com/YOURGITHUBUSERNAME/index.json -Username YOURGITHUBUSERNAME -Password YOURGITHUBTOKEN
If you need to install nuget.exe, download it from https://www.nuget.org/downloads. If you place it e.g. in C:\Exe, you can invoke it from the Windows Git Bash with /c/Exe/nuget.exe.
Also, you need to set the nuget API key:
nuget setapikey YOURGITHUBTOKEN -Source https://nuget.pkg.github.com/YOURGITHUBUSERNAME/index.json
This encrypts the key and saves it in a config file under your %APPDATA% folder. e.g. mine ends up in C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\NuGet\NuGet.Config.
Using Packages
-
- for each client project, add nuget.config to your project: add a
nuget.configfile in your project folder with a content like this:
- for each client project, add nuget.config to your project: add a
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
<packageSources>
<clear />
<add key="github" value="https://nuget.pkg.github.com/OWNER/index.json" />
</packageSources>
<packageSourceCredentials>
<github>
<add key="Username" value="YOURUSERNAME" />
<add key="ClearTextPassword" value="YOURTOKEN" />
</github>
</packageSourceCredentials>
</configuration>
This comes from the documentation sample. Yet, to avoid storing token in this file, which would be saved in the repo, I rather use a per-user or per-machine NuGet setting (reference): e.g. per-user:
nuget config -set GITHUB_PACKAGES_TOKEN=YOURTOKEN
This saves the setting per-user (the default option). Now, consume it like this (see Setting an environment variable in a NuGet.Config file):
<add key="Password" value="%GITHUB_PACKAGES_TOKEN%" />
- to use a package, execute
dotnet add YOURPROJECT.csproj package YOURPACKAGE --version YOURPACKAGEVERSION.
Yet, at this last point I get the above error. Where is my NuGet source config wrong?
