Question

I don’t want to store all my NuGet packages in my source code repository. Seems the packages folder has a huge amount of data in it and the inefficiency just annoys me.

Is it possible to delete all the NuGet packages in a way that keeps the references to them so the recipient of the now smaller solution can download all the NuGet packages that are needed?

Answer 1

Just delete packages folder. When recompiling missing packages will be downloaded. You can test it on your machine by just deleting the folder and recompiling.

The actual definitions for NuGet packages used in your solution / projects are stored in packages.config files.

Make sure that you have ‘Restore missing packages’ turned on. More info here:

http://docs.nuget.org/docs/workflows/using-nuget-without-committing-packages

It is also preferred not to commit packages folder to your source code repository.