NuGet Support in Visual Studio for Mac 7.8

Changes

NuGet package diagnostics displayed in Solution window
Support restoring multi-target framework projects
Display summary of NuGet restore errors in Package Console
Fixed wrong version of Microsoft.AspNetCore.App being restored
Fixed Paket restore not working with SDK style projects
Fixed NuGet restore ignoring build targets

More information on all the new features and changes in Visual Studio for Mac 7.8 can be found in the release notes.

NuGet package diagnostics displayed in Solution window

NuGet package diagnostic warnings are now shown in the Solution window.

NuGet package diagnostic warnings in Solution Window

The diagnostic warnings are shown underneath the NuGet package with a warning icon. Hovering over the warning icon will show a tooltip.

NuGet package diagnostic warning tooltip in Solution Window

Support restoring multi-target framework projects

Projects that have multiple target frameworks now have all frameworks restored.

Multi-target framework project restored in Solution window

Previously only the first target framework would be restored.

Conditional PackageReferences defined in the project file are also now respected when restoring the project. Previously the conditions on the PackageReferences would be ignored.

Conditional PackageReferences restored in Solution window

Visual Studio for Mac now uses the GenerateRestoreGraphFile MSBuild target to determine package dependencies. Previously this information was obtained from the project information held in memory. This fixes several NuGet restore bugs in Visual Studio for Mac.

Display summary of NuGet restore errors in Package Console

Creating an xUnit .NET Core test project named ‘xunit’ fails to restore since there is a package reference cycle between the project and the xunit NuGet package. Whilst this reference cycle is reported it is hidden in the Package Console output and all you would see was a message indicating that the restore had failed. Now the error information is shown at the end of the Package Console as a summary of the failures to make it easier to see the problem.

Now for the xunit project you will see the following at the end of the Package Console output:

Cycle detected.
  xunit -> xunit (>= 2.3.1).
Restore failed.

Bug Fixes

Fixed wrong version of Microsoft.AspNetCore.App being restored

With an ASP.NET Core 2.1 project, that had included a PackageReference for Microsoft.AspNetCore.App version 2.1.5, Visual Studio for Mac would incorrectly restore Microsoft.AspNetCore.App version 2.1.1.

Using the GenerateRestoreGraphFile MSBuild target to determine package reference information when restoring has fixed this problem.

Fixed Paket restore not working with SDK style projects

When Paket is used with an SDK style project it injects PackageReferences via the PaketRestore target from the Paket.Restore.targets file. Visual Studio for Mac was not using MSBuild to get the package reference information so PackageReferences defined by Paket were not being restored or made available.

Fixed NuGet restore ignoring build targets

OrchardCore would fail to restore when opened in Visual Studio for Mac. OrchardCore defines the PackageReference versions in a separate MSBuild .props file and has a custom MSBuild target to define these versions. This custom MSBuild target is now supported since Visual Studio for Mac uses the GenerateRestoreGraphFile MSBuild target to determine package references when restoring.