Conditionally Including a NuGet Package

Question

Does anyone have any experience of conditionally including a NuGet package in a build? Ideally it would be good if this could be done based on build configuration so for example package A gets included in a Debug build but package B is used instead in a Release build.

Is this possible?

Answer 1

You can edit your .csproj file and include below ItemGroup sections to include any packages conditionally.

<ItemGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)'=='Debug'">
   //Move any package reference here that will only be available in debug mode 
   <PackageReference Include="PackageA" Version="1.0.0.0" />
</ItemGroup>

<ItemGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)'=='Release'">
   //Move any package reference here that will only be available in release mode 
   <PackageReference Include="PackageB" Version="1.0.0.0" />
</ItemGroup>

Hope this helps.