Package Management for .NET developer: NuGet
Those of you who are reading the blog of Phil Haack have properly heard something about NuGet. “Package Management” sounds a little bit bulky but if you are a developer you should take a look on NuGet – it pays 
NuGet?
NuGet is an open source package management system which is developed from microsoftis and non-microsoftis (everything is open source). It should work as a kind of contact point for every kind of open source libraries. It includes a wide filed from Javascript libraries, EMAH handler, NHibernate to Mocking Frameworks. Properly there are a lot more opportunities.
Okay cool … but why?
It seems like this idea is born in the ASP.NET MVC team. In ASP.NET MVC it was the first time, that jQuery was included in the template. Of course this version will be old in a view days or weeks. Result: The developer is forced to collect the files by himself and look up for some updates. It´s the same thing with the server components like NHibernate. In the future NuGet will play an important deployment-role for many frameworks from Microsoft.
To say it short:
In fact NuGet works almost like the Extension Manager of Visual Studio 2010. There are several Microsoft Extensions as well….
If you are from the Ruby on Rails & co. world
Yes… this already exists on several platforms. But anyway it´s nice and fits perfect into the Visual Studio Tool landscape.
Curious?
How does this look like in exercise?
I´ve changed the jQuery library with the NuGet way on BizzBingo. The advantage is, that I´m now able to check up easily if there is a new version or not
You are able to download the Visual Studio doc files:
The files are loading into the Script directory – but you have to referent them by yourself. In the project a “package.config” file will be created:
Here it´s written which package is installed and which version. The packages will be saved nearly the SLN files in an extra directory so you are able to save all the files in the version administration.
If you start your application there is no Voodoo or dark magic happening. NuGet is down loading the files as packages an copy them into the project. Depending on the package there will be some changings of the web.config. But there is nothing bad happening while it runs.
Where did I get NuGet? What kinds of Packages are existing?
On the NuGet gallery you can take a look on the actual packages:
NuGet is a relatively “young” program – but there is a daily growing community using this service. Of course there are some packages missing but everyone is able to upload new
For friends of statistics: stats.nuget.org
You can take a look on “Getting Started“ on Codeplex. At the front page of nuget.org you will find the link to the installer of Visual Studio.
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