Updating Files in Existing Nuget Package

Question

I've got a multi-project ASP.NET Web Forms Application solution. I need to share a master page (3 files), some user controls and some images, scripts and CSS files out to the other projects in the solution.

I have already created a package using the NuGet Package Explorer per the documentation:

http://docs.nuget.org/docs/creating-packages/using-a-gui-to-build-packages

My current problem is this: I have updated the shared files in the root project and now I want to update the package before pulling it into the other projects (package currently in a local folder on my dev machine). How do I do this?

If anyone has some getting-started-quickly NuGet links, please share as the official docs just aren't doing it for me.

Answer 1

create the package again with a new version aka if the orginal is 1.0 make this 1.1 and NuGet will pick up the update.

Answer 2

The NuGet file is ultimately just a zip file. You can update entries using anything that can update a zip file. Such as something like

using System.IO.Compression;
using System.IO.Compression.FileSystem;

// EG: AddOrUpdateZipEntry("mypackage.nupkg", "my.dll", "bin/my.dll")
void AddOrUpdateZipEntry(string zipFilePath, string contentsFilePath, string entryPathInZip)
{
    using (var zip = ZipFile.Open(zipFilePath, ZipArchiveMode.Update))
    {
        zip.GetEntry(entryPathInZip)?.Delete(); // Remove any existing entry first.
        zip.CreateEntryFromFile(contentsFilePath, entryPathInZip);
    }
}

Answer 3

I've already done it before. You just have to increment the version of your package, inside metadata of .nuspec file.

In my case, my packages names are '[name].[version].nupkg' so I save my new package as '[name].[version +1].nupkg' as well.

The update apears in 'Manage nuget packages' updates section.

Answer 4

Are you asking what you need to do to update projects that are already using the package?

The key thing in this kind of scenario is simply versioning. The new version of the file will be sub'd out. Bundle up the package again with a new version number and then run Update-Package from the package manager console in VS.

You may also want to consider a couple of discreet packages, rather than one straight one. If you want to update a couple images or a CSS file, but not the MasterPage, it might work best to have a couple smaller ones.

Use the PM Explorer (from the post you mentioned) to open a couple packages from the NuGet main repository, in particular, jQuery 1.5.1 and 1.6.x and have a look, as these will be doing very similar things. No real magic needed!

Cheers.