Use a .nuspec file/script to automatically install nuget packages into a new project

Question

I am trying to automate the process of installing nuget packages into new visual studio projects. My idea is to reduce the time it takes to source all the packages via the nuget

Answer 1

Nuget already supports automation of installation and we can use nuget commandline to achieve this

Everytime you add a nuget package in Visual Studio,it gets add to a file called packages.config file.

E.g. will look like this

Every project you have in your solution will have packages.config file. You can go to the parent folder of all the projects and simply run comand 'nuget restore', it will get all the packages for you.

For this to work, nuget.exe needs to be downloaded separately .More details on the nuget command line can be found here and here's the commandline reference

Edit:

Thanks @Martin Ullrich pointing out.Just to be clear, The above method will not add the references to project file automatically,it will only get the packages to the packages folder.In VS2017,the support is there which @Martin's answer addresses.

Hope this helps!