Question

I have been using NuGet to manage my internally created assemblies for a few months, and it’s working very well. I recently ‘discovered’ portable class libraries, which has also been great – until it’s time to install the packages.

Say I have a PCL that targets .NET 4.5, SL5 and .NET for Windows Store Apps. I run nuget spec to create the .nuspec file, edit the values, package it up, and add the .nupkg to our internal feed. If I open the .nupkg file in the Package Explorer, I see one content folder under lib called portable-win+net45+sl50.

When I try to install the package from any compatible project in another solution, I get the following message:

“‘Project.PCL’ could not be installed because it is not compatible with any project in the solution. The package doesn’t target any framework.”

If I manually create the .nupkg in the Package Explorer, updating the version number, adding a lib folder for each targeted framework (not a portable folder) and added the Project.PCL.dll to each folder, I can add the package to the compatible projects in the solution. But to do this process every time I want to update a PCl is somewhat tedious (I had been creating a little .cmd file in the project root folder to quickly package and deploy).

Do other people have this problem? How can I package PCL’s in the same way as other types of projects?

Note – I’m using VS 2012 Ultimate and NuGet 2.2

Answer 1

It sounds like maybe nuget spec doesn’t work for Portable Class Libraries – that’s worth starting a thread or filing an issue on the NuGet site.

However, you can also create a .nuspec file from NuGet Package Explorer. Just create the package as you already did, but then choose “Save Metadata As…” to save it as a .nuspec. Afterwards you may need to edit the source paths in the nuspec file manually, but you should be able to automate the creation of the package.