How do I get NuGet to install/update all the packages in the packages.config?

Asked 29/7, 2011 at 17:23 Answered 17/12, 2023 at 5:27

797

I have a solution with multiple projects in it. Most of the third party references are missing, yet there are packages.config file for each project. How do I get NuGet to install/update all the packages needed? Does this need to be done via command line for each project?

Galilee answered 29/7, 2011 at 17:23 Comment(8)

With the latest NuGet 2.5 release there is now an "Update All" button in the packages manager: docs.nuget.org/docs/release-notes/… – Valida 28/5, 2013 at 10:31

@ErikSchierboom Thanks! This thread should be updated as this is now available – Marcelinomarcell 12/6, 2013 at 16:21

Related project :chocolatey.org – Achievement 21/6, 2014 at 13:25

Take a look at: blog.nuget.org/20121231/… – Microcyte 10/7, 2014 at 13:21

For the benefit of searchers, in VS2013, You can right click the solution and choose 'Enable NuGet Package Restore'. Then build. – Unalienable 12/8, 2014 at 13:47

For folks late to the party, the second answer is much better, in the package manager console, just run Update-Package -Reinstall. – Benefic 20/6, 2017 at 20:58

Microsoft docs: How to reinstall and update packages – Effectuate 1/8, 2018 at 18:26

VS2017: right-click on Solution in Solution Explorer > Restore NuGet Packages – Tensity 9/4, 2019 at 0:9

993

You can use nuget.exe to restore your packages or with NuGet 2.7, or above, installed you can simply compile your solution in Visual Studio, which will also restore the missing packages.

For NuGet.exe you can run the following command for each project.

nuget install packages.config

Or with NuGet 2.7 you can restore all packages in the solution using the command line.

nuget restore YourSolution.sln

Both of these will pull down the packages. Your project files will not be modified however when running this command so the project should already have a reference to the NuGet packages. If this is not the case then you can use Visual Studio to install the packages.

With NuGet 2.7, and above, Visual Studio will automatically restore missing NuGet packages when you build your solution so there is no need to use NuGet.exe.

To update all the packages in your solution, first restore them, and then you can either use NuGet.exe to update the packages or from within Visual Studio you can update the packages from the Package Manager Console window, or finally you can use the Manage Packages dialog.

From the command line you can update packages in the solution to the latest version available from nuget.org.

nuget update YourSolution.sln

Note that this will not run any PowerShell scripts in any NuGet packages.

From within Visual Studio you can use the Package Manager Console to also update the packages. This has the benefit that any PowerShell scripts will be run as part of the update where as using NuGet.exe will not run them. The following command will update all packages in every project to the latest version available from nuget.org.

Update-Package

You can also restrict this down to one project.

Update-Package -Project YourProjectName

If you want to reinstall the packages to the same versions as were previously installed then you can use the -reinstall argument with Update-Package command.

Update-Package -reinstall

You can also restrict this down to one project.

Update-Package -reinstall -Project YourProjectName

The -reinstall option will first uninstall and then install the package back again into a project.

Or, you can update the packages using the Manage Packages dialog.

Updates:

2013/07/10 - Updated with information about nuget restore in NuGet 2.7
2014/07/06 - Updated with information about automatic package restore in Visual Studio and brought the answer up to date with other changes to NuGet.
2014/11/21 - Updated with information about -reinstall

Squalene answered 30/7, 2011 at 11:11 Comment(20)

Is there some simple command within Visual Studio to do this? I have auto-restore enabled for solution but "Build" still gives me lots of error because of missing references (packages have not been restored from packages.config). – Condescension 9/3, 2012 at 19:54

I do not think so without installing something like NuGet Power Tools - github.com/davidfowl/NuGetPowerTools. However that will do essentially the same thing as the auto-restore you already have. – Squalene 10/3, 2012 at 17:6

This also works for installing packages in general, not just to "restore" them (no big technical difference, as restoring IS installing; but it's not restricted to people who want to use the solution package restore feature). You do, however, need to set an environment variable EnableNuGetPackageRestore for this purpose. I set it in my psake script before calling "nuget install packages.config" like so: $env:EnableNuGetPackageRestore = "true". This sets the var for the PS process and the processes it spawns, without affecting the machine-wide variables (and possibly other builds). – Cranial 7/3, 2013 at 7:41

Restoring is not quite the same as installing. Installing a package from the command line will not change your project so things like assembly references will not be added. – Squalene 8/3, 2013 at 11:12

@MattWard where can that nugget restore *.sln be run from? I tried from the pm console. – Hesse 6/2, 2014 at 14:37

You have two options. 1) Use NuGet.exe from the normal Windows command line - you may need to download it. 2) Build the solution from within Visual Studio then the restore should happen automatically - if you have at least NuGet 2.7 installed. – Squalene 6/2, 2014 at 14:45

I notice that this doesn't work in TFS - Visual Studio Online. Any work around? – Cary 14/7, 2014 at 14:13

Not sure about TFS - Visual Studio Online. According to the NuGet docs there is a package restore workflow built in - docs.nuget.org/docs/reference/package-restore-with-team-build – Squalene 14/7, 2014 at 14:23

This stinks - Update-Package -Project YourProjectName won't use the versions from packages.config, it gets the latest instead, which isn't always a good thing. – Forenamed 21/11, 2014 at 18:45

@Ben-Wilde - If you want to reinstall the same versions you can use Update-Package -Project YourProjectName -Reinstall – Squalene 21/11, 2014 at 19:5

I must have spent atleast an hour searching for a solution and finally it was indeed Update-Package -reinstall -Project ProjectName – Spree 7/1, 2016 at 9:33

This should also help with the command(or any) Show-Command Update-Package – Outride 2/5, 2016 at 19:57

docs.nuget.org/consume/package-restore/… . better solution – Bullbat 28/8, 2016 at 22:11

Perhaps, as your answer is a populer search result, you could reorder the answers. They are all correct, except the Powershell type is now the default in nuget package manager console (VS2015) – Furbelow 2/2, 2017 at 13:41

This worked for me: (thx google and Stack) If you want to reinstall the packages to the same versions as were previously installed then you can use the -reinstall argument with Update-Package command. Update-Package -reinstall – Heida 24/1, 2018 at 16:46

I found no mention in the docs about your claim that nuget update YourSolution.sln "…will not run any PowerShell scripts in any NuGet packages…". Is this claim still true with NuGet.exe 4.7 and above? – Bendite 28/9, 2018 at 13:22

No NuGet.exe version will run PowerShell scripts from the command line. The PowerShell api exposed to NuGet scripts is Visual Studio on Windows specific so it is not supported in cross platform. You should look at alternatives such as MSBuild .targets if you need to do some extra processing. You can also test it to see if PowerShell scripts will be run. The 'nuget update' has limited functionality compared with updating within Visual Studio on Windows. – Squalene 28/9, 2018 at 14:55

how do you do this with the cross platform "dotnet" tool? – Alverson 30/4, 2021 at 18:31

nuget update works only with projects with packages.config files (which is... legacy) – Biannulate 4/5, 2022 at 13:22

-ProjectName instead of -Project is pretty handy – Pestle 25/1, 2023 at 14:21

615

Open Package Manager Console

View -> Other Windows -> Package Manager Console

Reinstall all packages in ALL PROJECTS of the current solution:

Update-Package -Reinstall

Reinstall all packages in SPECIFIC PROJECT of the current solution (Thanks to unarity and ashes999):

Update-Package -ProjectName 'YourProjectNameGoesHere' -Reinstall

Arching answered 2/9, 2013 at 16:27 Comment(5)

This is also the perfect option for if you've just changed your target framework or similar. I was facing the prospect of having to update 25 odd projects with loads of nuget packages spread around them and the first command was perfect for what I wanted. And not even nuke in the overkill sense either. – Dagnydago 18/2, 2014 at 12:58

Be aware that this will uninstall & reinstall everything -- so all of your project and config files will change. (I'm running NuGet 2.8.) – Delgadillo 23/4, 2014 at 19:57

You might even want to add the -IgnoreDependencies switch. I've had an Update-Package fail because a dependency of one of the packages I used existed in a newer version than specified in my packages.config – Twomey 17/7, 2014 at 9:20

@Mathias has a good point. I used this command and the result was no packages at all in any project after this message apepared: Update-Package : Already referencing a newer version of 'Newtonsoft.Json'. I chose to reinstate my packages.config files and try the reinstall on build – Wessels 27/7, 2014 at 0:14

An issue I have is that it deletes my packages.config and doesnt restore it - to get around it, I copy the packages.config contents to a notepad file, undo (in TFS) the deletion of packages.config and overwrite with the new data. Probably some setting in VS that causes this but I cant find it. – Dagnydago 14/2, 2020 at 13:39

176

There is another, newer and quicker way to do this from within Visual Studio. Check out this post by David Ebbo, and reference the comments section if you run into trouble. Basically, you do the following in Package Manager prompt:

PM> Install-Package NuGetPowerTools
PM> Enable-PackageRestore

Afterwards, when you build your solution the packages will be automatically installed if they're missing.

Update:

This functionality is built into Nuget 1.6 with visual studio integration so you don't even need to install NuGetPowerTools or type commands. All you have to do is

Right click on the Solution node in Solution Explorer and select Enable NuGet Package Restore.

Read this article for more details.

Sitology answered 6/12, 2011 at 16:19 Comment(4)

The updated answer here is going to be the best solution for most people as they won't have nuget.exe (but will have nuget installed into Visual Studio). – Malachi 12/9, 2012 at 7:36

But the package restore actually downloads nuget.exe for you – Amandine 20/11, 2012 at 10:46

I just did this. and it still fails the build saying references are missing. Build says all packages are already installed.I went to the solution/packages folder deleted the package(s) in question and it downloaded them and started working. – Wordplay 12/4, 2013 at 19:17

@Shy this way is now deprecated in favor of a solution that doesn't modify all of your project files. – Cary 14/7, 2014 at 14:14

Here's another solution if you are using website projects, or don't want to enable NuGet Package restore.

You can use the package manager console to enumerate all the packages in the package.config file and re-install them.

# read the packages.config file into an XML object
[xml]$packages = gc packages.config

# install each package 
$packages.packages.package | % { Install-Package -id $($_.id) -Version $($_.version) }

Selfexplanatory answered 1/2, 2013 at 9:49 Comment(5)

I tried each of the answers above and could not get them to work on one of my solutions. But a variation of this one did. $packages.packages.package | % { Update-Package -reinstall -id $($_.id) } – Clarenceclarenceux 1/2, 2013 at 19:6

nuget package restore is a nightmare if you use multiple solutions on same csproj... i applaud this answer! – Astronavigation 21/2, 2013 at 18:29

This didn't fix my problem but it sure made me feel better! – Freiburg 2/4, 2013 at 20:5

This is excellent, and provides a way to migrate packages to a new project: [xml]$packages = gc c:\PathToExisting\packages.config #followed by # install each package $packages.packages.package | % { Install-Package -id $($_.id) -Version $($_.version) } – Brock 5/8, 2015 at 14:42

@Clarenceclarenceux you could have just typed Update-Package -Reinstall. – Benefic 20/6, 2017 at 21:1

Update-Package -ProjectName 'YourProjectNameGoesHere' -Reinstall

This is best and easiest example I found. It will reinstall all nugets that are listed in packages.config and it will preserve current versions. Replace YourProjectNameGoesHere with the project name.

Herb answered 23/10, 2013 at 16:38 Comment(1)

I had some problems with this because my packages.config contained references to two packages with specific versions, but one package depended on the other with no specific version. When I ran the update, it first uninstalled all packages and then failed the reinstall because a newer version of the dependency was 'already referenced'. The removal had worked fine though, so now my packages.config was empty. I had to revert packages.config from source control and update the conflicting package before trying the full update... – Twomey 17/7, 2014 at 9:1

With the latest NuGet 2.5 release there is now an "Update All" button in the packages manager: http://docs.nuget.org/docs/release-notes/nuget-2.5#Update_All_button_to_allow_updating_all_packages_at_once

Valida answered 12/6, 2013 at 17:6 Comment(1)

Also, from the Package Manager Console you can run "Update-Package" to do all the packages in your project: nuget.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Updating%20All%20Packages – Showroom 6/8, 2013 at 7:56

I'm using visual studio 2015 and the solutions given above didn't work for me, so i did the following:

Delete the packages folder from my solution and also bin and obj folders from every project in the solution and give it a rebuild.

Maybe you will have the next error:

unable to locate nuget.exe

To solve this: Change this line in your NuGet.targets file and setting it to true:

<DownloadNuGetExe Condition=" '$(DownloadNuGetExe)' == '' ">true</DownloadNuGetExe>

Reference:https://stackoverflow.com/a/30918648 and https://stackoverflow.com/a/20502049

Deathday answered 1/12, 2015 at 2:0 Comment(0)

After 3 hours of searching and investigation.

I had problems with it because we have two members in team (using GitHub source control), because we didn't restrict files for packages for sending to remote repository, one of team members was send packages to server and i have pull that changes to my local.

After that i had same problem as PO, also i wasn't be able to publish my API project to server.

At the and I have just used

Update-Package -Reinstall - run this command on Package Manager Console

This command will reinstall all your packages that you have used in your solution. (For every project)

Reinstall all packages in ALL PROJECTS of the current solution:

Update-Package -ProjectName 'NameOfProject' -Reinstall - run this command on Package Manager Console

This command will reinstall all your packages that are in relation with project that you specified after "-ProjectName". And i think that this is better because i had wait for half a hour to reinstall all packages in solution.

For this many thanks to Rodolpho Brock.

Also, I would recommend you that when you pull changes from remote server, to press "Restore packages" button that will be shown by Visual studio.

Mathewson answered 30/8, 2017 at 14:16 Comment(0)

I believe the first thing you need to do is enable the package restore feature. See also here. This is done at the solution (not project) level.

But that won't get you all the way -- I ran into a similar issue after having enabled the restore feature. (VS2013, NuGet 2.8.)

It turned out I had (unintentionally) committed the packages to source control when I committed the project -- but Visual Studio (and the source control plugin) had helpfully ignored the binaries when performing the check-in.

The problem arose when I created a release branch. My local copy of the dev/main/trunk branch had the binaries, because that's where I had originally installed/downloaded the packages.
However, in the new release branch,

the package folders and .nupkg files were all there -- so NuGet didn't think there was anything to restore;
but at the same time, none of the DLLs were present -- i.e. the third-party references were missing -- so I couldn't build.

I deleted all the package folders in $(SolutionDir)/packages (under the release branch) and then ran a full rebuild, and this time the build succeeded.
... and then of course I went back and removed the package folders from source control (in the trunk and release branch). I'm not clear (yet) on whether the repositories.config file should be removed as well.

Many of the components installed for you by the project templates -- at least for web projects -- are NuGet packages. That is, this issue is not limited to packages you've added.
So enable package restore immediately after creating the project/solution, and before you perform an initial check-in, clear the packages folder (and make sure you commit the .nuget folder to source control).

Disclaimer: I saw another answer here on SO which indicated that clearing the packages folder was part of the resolution. That put me on the right track, so I'd like to give the author credit, but I can no longer locate that question/answer. I'll post an edit if I stumble across it.

I'd also note that Update-Package -reinstall will modify the .sln and .csproj/.vbproj files. At least that's what it did in my case. Which IMHO makes this option much less attractive.

Delgadillo answered 23/4, 2014 at 20:29 Comment(1)

I had this exact same issue and spent a long time upgrading and reinstalling packages when as you say all that needed to be done was to delete the local packages. – Phallus 19/11, 2015 at 13:37

For those arriving here due to the build server falling foul of this, you can create an MSBuild target running the exec command to run the nuget restore command, as below (in this case nuget.exe is in the .nuget folder, rather than on the path), which can then be run in a TeamCity build step immediately prior to building the solution

<Target Name="BeforeBuild">
  <Exec Command="..\.nuget\nuget restore ..\MySolution.sln"/>
</Target>

Torto answered 13/4, 2016 at 8:53 Comment(0)

If you Nuget 2.8 install, check the checkbox

Tools >> Nuget Manager >> Package Manager Settings >> Automatically check for missing packages during build

in Visual Studio. If it is checked, then simply rebuild the project will restore all your reference libraries.

Burney answered 13/7, 2015 at 21:50 Comment(1)

Most convenient option from UI of Visual Studio. You also need to check the Allow NuGet to download missing packages checkbox as well. – Negativism 7/7, 2017 at 8:49

I tried Update-Package -reinstall but it fails on a package and stopped processing all remaining packages of projects in my solution.

I ended up with my script that enumerates all package.config files and run Update-Package -Reinstall -ProjectName prj -Id pkg for each project/package.

Hope it can be useful for someone:

$files = Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Include packages.config;

[array]$projectPackages = @();
$files | foreach { [xml]$packageFile = gc $_; $projectName = $_.Directory.Name; $packageFile.packages.package.id | foreach { $projectPackages += @( ,@( $projectName, $_ ) ) } }

$projectPackages | foreach { Update-Package -Reinstall -ProjectName $_[0] -Id $_[1] }

Edit: This is an error that I had: Update-Package : Unable to find package 'EntityFramework.BulkInsert-ef6'. Existing packages must be restored before performing an install or update. Manual run of Update-Package -Reinstall -ProjectName my_prj -Id EntityFramework.BulkInsert-ef6 worked very well.

Suit answered 1/11, 2018 at 3:6 Comment(1)

I am crying with joy as well! Yes!! what a time saver. Just as an FYI if you use this line instead of the last line in Sergei's script, it will not install dependencies. Just a straight ReInstall: $projectPackages | foreach { Update-Package -IgnoreDependencies -Reinstall -ProjectName $_[0] -Id $_[1] } – Was 16/8, 2019 at 0:10

now Nuget Package Manager Console in Visual Studio 2012 gives you a "Restore" button automatically as soon it find any package not installed but in there in package.config. Awesome Feature!

Scant answered 14/1, 2014 at 9:48 Comment(0)

At VS2012 V11, if I use "-Reinstall" at the end of the line it doesn't work.

So I simply used:

Update-Package -ProjectName 'NAME_OF_THE_PROJECT'

Showalter answered 17/5, 2014 at 15:24 Comment(0)

I know this is an old post, but thought this could be useful. If you have a need to ignore specific packages during the update process (like any packages that update JavaScript references), use the following PowerShell script (make sure your package source is set to "All" in Package Manager Console):

EDIT 2014-09-25 10:55 AM EST - Fixed a bug in the script

$packagePath = "packages.config"
$projectName = "MyProjectName"

$packagesToIgnore = @(
    "bootstrap",
    "jQuery",
    "jquery-globalize",
    "jquery.mobile",
    "jQuery.jqGrid",
    "jQuery.UI.Combined",
    "jQuery.Validation",
    "Microsoft.jQuery.Unobtrusive.Validation",
    "Modernizr",
    "Moment.js"
)

[xml]$packageFile = gc $packagePath
$packagesToProcess = $packageFile.packages.package | Where-Object {$packagesToIgnore -notcontains $_.id}

$packagesToProcess | % { Update-Package -reinstall -projectname $projectName -id $($_.id) }

Emancipation answered 25/9, 2014 at 14:26 Comment(0)

Don't know since when, but in VS2019 you can do it in an easier way:

right click solution in Solution Explorer
select Manage Nuget Packages for Solution
there are 4 tabs, Browse, Installed, Updates, Consolidate
the Consolidate shows if there is any projects using different version of packages (and in most cases, that's why we want to update all the packages)
the Updates shows if there is any update available in ANY projects. Select all and click update, the job will be done.

Shipman answered 1/1, 2020 at 11:40 Comment(0)

In Visual Studio 2017 - When you compile using IDE - It will download all the missing nuget packages and save in the folder "packages".

But on the build machine compilation was done using msbuild.exe. In that case, I downloaded nuget.exe.

During each build process before executing msbuild.exe. It will execute -> nuget.exe restore NAME_OF_SLN_File (if there is only one .SLN file then you can ignore that parameter).

Delgadillo answered 27/3, 2018 at 16:0 Comment(1)

I found that you can use MSBuild -t:restore on the SLN at the command line to do this. MSbuild -t:restore Xxxx.sln – Deplane 15/1, 2019 at 23:56

-1

Everyone, remember to P.A.U.S.E. - Prefer Avoiding Unneeded Serious Effort...

I like the command line and I cannot remember all these package management commands, so here is my method for managing packages using an alias file from within the Visual Studio 2022 Package Manager console. Be careful that you don't overwrite an important $PROFILE or allow your custom aliases to interfere with mission-critical scripts. Let's get lazy!

Launch Visual Studio
Open Package Manager Console (Tools -> NuGet Package Manager -> Package Manager Console)
[OPTIONAL] Check an existing NuGet profile:

Test-Path $PROFILE
type $PROFILE

Follow these steps to create a blank NuGet profile:

if (!(Test-Path $PROFILE)) { New-Item -Type File -Path $PROFILE -Force }
notepad $PROFILE

Copy/paste (or customize) these aliases to your open (might be blank) $PROFILE in Notepad and save it:

# List installed packages
function list { Get-Package }

# Check for package updates
function check { Get-Package -Updates }

# Upgrade installed packages
function upgrade { Get-Package | % { Update-Package $_.Id } }

# Install a package by name
function install { param($name) Install-Package $name }

# Uninstall a package by name
function uninstall { param($name) Uninstall-Package $name }

# Reload packages
function reload { Get-Package | % { Install-Package -Id $_.Id -Version $_.Version } }

# Search packages
function search { param($name) Find-Package $name }

Close and relaunch Visual Studio
Open Package Manager Console
Use your NuGet aliases

Mental answered 17/12, 2023 at 5:27 Comment(0)

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