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Open Source .NET Package Manager

NuPack is a free, open source developer focused package management system for the .NET platform intent on simplifying the process of incorporating third party libraries into a .NET application during development.
There are a large number of useful 3rd party open source libraries out there for the .NET platform, but for those not familiar with the OSS ecosystem, it can be a pain to pull these libraries into a project.
Let’s take ELMAH as an example. It’s a fine error logging utility which has no dependencies on other libraries, but is still a challenge to integrate into a project. These are the steps it takes:

  1. Find ELMAH
  2. Download the correct zip package.
  3. “Unblock” the package.
  4. Verify its hash against the one provided by the hosting environment.
  5. Unzip the package contents into a specific location in the solution.
  6. Add an assembly reference to the assembly.
  7. Update web.config with the correct settings which a developer needs to search for.

And this is for a library that has no dependencies. Imagine doing this for NHibernate.Linq which has multiple dependencies each needing similar steps. We can do much better!
NuPack automates all these common and tedious tasks for a package as well as its dependencies. It removes nearly all of the challenges of incorporating a third party open source library into a project’s source tree. Of course, using that library properly is still up to the developer.


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