How to switch between nuget and project references effectively?

Question

I am developing a private test harness that is split between a core library with a couple of extension plugins.

The extension projects depend on a core library via a private MyGet feed so i can just click pack and upload to the MyGet feed without much hassle. The issue i'm having is that any API update to the core lib isn't reflected on the extension libs unless i issue a completely new version of the core NuGet package.

That in itself isn't so bad but it has two productivity-killer implications: I can't debug core code in an extension code context and making my development iteration process dependant on MyGet is a huge slowdown.

How can i fix this? I've been manually switching between project and NuGet dependencies every time i want to generate new NuGet packages but i'm pretty sure someone else must have a better solution to this problem.

Answer 1

I've been using NuGet Reference Switcher to do this - it's a Visual Studio extension to handle exactly this problem:

• VS2015: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=RicoSuter.NuGetReferenceSwitcherforVisualStudio2015
• VS2017: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=RicoSuter.NuGetReferenceSwitcherforVisualStudio2017

The workflow using this is still not perfect, but it's better than manually switching projects. I'd love to hear other ideas though.