Dependency Management in .Net: Get

[Update: This article refers to a tool which will no longer be maintained. Until such time as NuGet is updated to naively support these capabilities, consider using the plug-in described here.]

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In my last article, I demonstrated how my team is currently using NuGet.exe from our rake build to facilitate application-level, build-time retrieval of external dependencies.  Since not everyone uses rake for their build process, I decided to create a simple tool that could be consumed by any build process.

To see how the tool works, follow these steps:

Step 1: From the command line, execute the following:

$> nuget install Get

Step 2: Change directory to the Get tools folder.

Step 3: Create a plain text file named dependencies.config and add the following package references:

NHibernate   3.2.0.4000
Moq          4.0.10827

Step 4: Execute the following command:

$> get dependencies.config

The tool currently supports NuGet’s -Source, -ExcludeVersion, and -OutputDirectory switches.  From here, you just need to have it download to a central lib folder and adjust your project references as necessary.  Now stop checking in those assemblies! 🙂