How should I include Package References in a VSIX project

Question

My solution creates a Visual Studio Package from multiple projects, using multiple NuGet packages.

All of the Nuget packages are specified in the project files using PackageReference (rather than the older packages.config file). I am using Visual Studio 2019.

I have had a problem, that the DLLs referenced by NuGet Packages are not included in the VSIX installation.

There is a solution to this problem, described in this article by Daniel Cazzulino, by adding the following code to the project file:

<PropertyGroup>
  <GetVsixSourceItemsDependsOn>$(GetVsixSourceItemsDependsOn);IncludeNuGetResolvedAssets</GetVsixSourceItemsDependsOn>
</PropertyGroup>
<Target Name="IncludeNuGetResolvedAssets" DependsOnTargets="ResolveNuGetPackageAssets">
  <ItemGroup>
    <VSIXCopyLocalReferenceSourceItem Include="@(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths)"  /> 
  </ItemGroup>
</Target>

This does work, but it blows up the size of the installation from about 20MB to about 40MB.

The installation now includes a lot of PDB files, which I don't really need.

More significantly, it brings in about 46MB of Visual Studio DLLs which are not necessary, because they are part of Visual Studio.

Is there a better way to ensure that the referenced NuGet packages are included in the VSIX, without inflating the installation with these other files?

Answer 1

You can use a simple script like this:

<Target Name="IncludeNuGetPackageReferences" AfterTargets="GetVsixSourceItems">
  <ItemGroup>
    <VSIXSourceItem Include="@(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths)" Condition="'%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.NuGetPackageId)' == 'Newtonsoft.Json'" />
    <VSIXSourceItem Include="@(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths)" Condition="'%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.NuGetPackageId)' == 'xxx'" />
 ... </ItemGroup>
</Target>

You can specify what assemblies should be included into .vsix . And it won't copy the unnecessary VS assemblies after tests in my machine. Hint from smourier, thanks to him.

Hope it helps:)