How to include third party dependencies in nuget packages?

Question

I have a C# Class Library (CL) that I need to package into a nuget package. This project targets .Net Standard 2.0 and has a .csproj file that looks like this:

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">

  <PropertyGroup>
    <TargetFrameworks>netstandard2.0</TargetFrameworks>
    <Version>1.0.13</Version>
    <PackageTags>custom task</PackageTags>
    <PackageIconUrl></PackageIconUrl>
  </PropertyGroup>

  <PropertyGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)|$(TargetFramework)|$(Platform)'=='Debug|netstandard2.0|AnyCPU'">
    <DocumentationFile>C:\xxx\xxx\xxx.xml</xxx>
  </PropertyGroup>

  <PropertyGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)|$(TargetFramework)|$(Platform)'=='Release|netstandard2.0|AnyCPU'">
    <DocumentationFile>xxx.xml</DocumentationFile>
  </PropertyGroup>

  <ItemGroup>
    <Content Include="TaskMetadata.json">
      <PackagePath>TaskMetadata.json</PackagePath>
      <Pack>True</Pack>
    </Content>
  </ItemGroup>

  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.DataAnnotations" Version="2.2.0" />
    <PackageReference Include="Newtonsoft.Json" Version="12.0.3" />
    <PackageReference Include="System.Data.SqlClient" Version="4.8.1" />
  </ItemGroup>

</Project>

Now the challenge is creating the package and these are the methods I have tried.

In VS, right click the project and pick publish. This creates a nuget package that does not include any of the third party dependencies such as Newtonsoft.json, SqlClient etc.
nuget pack xxx.csproj -IncludeReferencedProjects This results in

Error NU5012: Unable to find 'bin\Debug\xxx\bin\Debug\'. Make sure the project has been built.
nuget pack xxx.csproj -c Release This results in

File 'C:\projects\xxx\xxx\Release' does not exist.

4 Unpacking the nuget package from try 1 and extracting the xxx.nuspec file and then running nuget pack xxx.nuspec but this seem to package eveything in the entire folder.

How can I package my library in a nuget version containing only release compiled code and third party dependencies? I would prefer to not having to sync both a .csproj file and .nuspec file all the time to make this work.

Check the release and debug folders and see if they contain the same dlls. It seems the debug folder has all the dlls but the release may not. — jdweng, Jun 08 '20 at 11:41
My debug and release folder has the same files: xxx.deps.json,xxx.dll,xxx.pdb,xxx.xml — Essej, Jun 08 '20 at 11:46
doesn't the dependencies get auto installed from nuget when your package is installed ? I think you don't need to copy those in to your package check this : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28229892/nuget-package-dependencies — Vilsad P P, Jun 08 '20 at 11:54
@jdweng yep But I'm not going to use the package in vs, its on a platform that runs its as custom tasks. I only need the compiled third party dependencies. — Essej, Jun 08 '20 at 12:13

How to include third party dependencies in nuget packages?

0 Answers0