Matt Ward

Manage Global NuGet Folders for Visual Studio for Mac

NuGet supports configuring the location of the following global folders:

  • Global NuGet packages cache
    • ~/.nuget/packages
  • HTTP cache
    • ~/.local/share/NuGet/v3-cache
  • NuGet plugins ache
    • ~/.local/share/NuGet/plugins-cache

The above folder locations can be found by running the following command from Terminal.

nuget locals all -list

Here we will take a look at how these can be configured for use by Visual Studio for Mac 8.5 when running on macOS Catalina.

Configuring Global Packages Folder Only

If only the global packages folder needs to be configured then the simplest way is to define the globalPackagesFolder folder in the ~/.config/NuGet/NuGet.Config file.

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<configuration>
  <config>
    <add key="globalPackagesFolder" value="/Volumes/YourDrive/NuGet/.nuget/packages" />
  </config>
  <packageSources>
    <add key="nuget.org" value="https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json" protocolVersion="3" />
  </packageSources>
</configuration>

Visual Studio for Mac will need to be restarted before it picks up any changes to the NuGet.Config file.

Configuring Global Folders with Environment Variables

Visual Studio for Mac will not use environment variables defined in the Bash profile ~/.bash_profile or the Zsh profile ~/.zprofile unless Visual Studio for Mac is run from the Terminal.

open -n "/Applications/Visual Studio.app"

When Visual Studio for Mac is run from the Dock, or from LaunchPad, it does not inherit these environment variables.

Let us take a look at how we can define these NuGet environment variables so that Visual Studio for Mac will use them without having to launch it from the Terminal.

Create the file ~/Library/LaunchAgents/environment.plist containing the following:

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<?xml version=“1.0” encoding=“UTF-8”?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC “-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN” “https://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd”>
<plist version=“1.0”>
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>my.startup</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>sh</string>
<string>-c</string>
<string>launchctl setenv NUGET_PACKAGES /Volumes/YourDrive/NuGet/.nuget/packages
launchctl setenv NUGET_HTTP_CACHE_PATH /Volumes/YourDrive/NuGet/.nuget/v3-cache
launchctl setenv NUGET_PLUGINS_CACHE_PATH /Volumes/YourDrive/NuGet/.nuget/plugins-cache</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Replace the NuGet paths /Volumes/YourDrive/NuGet/ defined above as required.

Restart macOS to have this Launch Agent run.

After restarting you can check the environment variables are being used by NuGet by using the command line:

nuget locals all -list

Now when Visual Studio for Mac is launched from the Dock, or from LaunchPad, it will use these custom NuGet folders.

More Information

launchctl setenv defines environment variables globally so they are available to all macOS applications launched with launchd.