Nuget package dependencies

[Zsolt Kollarits]

Dear Advanced Installer Support Team,

We are facing with an issue that due to the size of our solutions and projects we have more and more NuGet packages that we are using. Those packages requires further packages as dependencies, it means we need to add even more files to our setup project. It´s getting a bit hard to maintain our .aip in terms of those dependencies, also the problem is that we might need different versions of the same DLL to be added. We don´t really like that our project is getting just bigger and bigger, the complexity also grows, and due to the file "duplications" (different versions of the same file) the .EXE file we generate is also getting bigger and bigger.

Do you have a suggestion how to properly handle NuGet packages within Advanced Installer? Is there a way that if we add a DLL, then somehow dependent DLLs are kind of recognized and automatically added to the .aip.

We are sure we are not the only ones who are using heavily NuGet packages and facing with this issue, so maybe you have some recommended scenario for us to handle our problems.

Best regards,
Zsolt Kollarits

[Catalin]

Hello Zsolt,

If possible, could you please give me some more details about your scenario so I can better understand it?

For instance, are you using our Visual Studio Extension? Or you mean when adding manually some DLLs that we should find their dependencies?

Best regards,
Catalin

[Zsolt Kollarits]

Hi Catalin,

Yes, so when we are picking a NuGet DLL from a certain location, sometimes those DLLs have a lot of depdendencies, so they are working only if some other DLLs are also installed. It means we need to add a list of new DLLs into our setup, we would like to be sure that all the dependencies are installed, so we are wondering if you have any in-built Advanced Installer tool/feature/option to automatically recognize all the necessary dependencies (DLLs) and put them into the setup .aip somehow.

Or in general do you have a best practice of how to add NuGet package DLLs to the .aip project?

Best regards,
Zsolt

[Catalin]

Hello Zsolt,

Thank you for your followup on this and for sharing the details with me - it is for sure helpful.

By default, our extension should pick up the dependencies.

However, in your case, it looks like this is not the case.

If possible, could you please let me know what NuGet you are using and a small test-case to test this? I'm mostly interested in reproducing this on my end so I would need to know, for instance:

- what dll you are adding

- what are this dll's dependencies

- from where I can download the above

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Best regards,
Catalin

[Zsolt Kollarits]

Hi Catalin,

I will send you all the details, but may I ask you which extension are you talking about exactly?

Thanks,
Zsolt

[Catalin]

Hey Zsolt,

I was talking about our Visual Studio Extension.

If you are not using this, then no problem.

Please forward me the resources, together with a test-case and I will further test and investigate this.

Best regards,
Catalin

[Zsolt Kollarits]

Dear Catalin,

We have a big, complex .aip project, and so far we haven't used your Visual Studio Extension. Our current way of doing thing is that we are building quite a few of our solutions (including 40-50 or more individual projects), then we kind of use the built files and use them in the .aip.

Do you think we utilize your Visual Studio Extension in our complex situation too?

So once more to highlight: our goal would be to get some kind of notification (at least) if a NuGet DLLs we add to our .aip is dependent upon another NuGet DLL. Preferably .aip could add the dependent DLL too, automatically.

We are unsure how to add/handle NuGet packages properly. Do you have any use case/guidance for that?

Best regards,
Zsolt

[Catalin]

Hello Zsolt,

Do you think we utilize your Visual Studio Extension in our complex situation too?

To be quite honest, for your project, considering its' size and complexity, I would advise sticking to the GUI version of Advanced Installer.

Now, regarding the dependencies, have you tried the "Add dependency" option from the "Files and Folders" page?

Screenshot_102.png (153.5 KiB) Viewed 55041 times

Add Dependencies Dialog

If I understand correctly, this is what you would be looking for.

Hope this helps!

Best regards,
Catalin

[Zsolt Kollarits]

Dear Catalin,

Thank you very much for your hint, that Add Dependencies dialog is pretty useful, however our goal would be the following:
1. We are adding a lot of DLLs into the GAC (hundred DLL or more).
2. We would like to know if any of our DLLs that we added is "broken" in a way that a dependency is missing.
3. So the question is, if you have a global button that would tell us that "A.dll, B.dll...... Z.dll is missing from your project".

So the Add Dependencies dialog is working fine, but we would need a "global" list of missing DLLs. Is it possible to get that list somehow?

Thanks in advance

Best regards,
Zsolt

[Catalin]

Hello Zsolt,

You are always welcome!

Regarding your question, I'm afraid that might not be possible currently.

However, I will discuss with our dev team to see whether or not we can improve our current support.

Best regards,
Catalin