Not using package restore, but still getting "must install nuget package Microsoft.Bcl.Build"

Question

I'm working on a project that uses nuget but does not use package restore. (This is a decision outside of my control by the way, so any answers that involve enabling package restore aren't ones I'll be able to use.)

A handful of projects in the solution (4 out of a total of 34; a WinJS app store project, two ordinary .NET class library, and one of my Azure cloud projects) are reporting this infamous warning:

...packages\Microsoft.Bcl.Build.1.0.13\tools\Microsoft.Bcl.Build.targets(225,5): warning : All projects referencing Valhalla.Consumer.Core.csproj must install nuget package Microsoft.Bcl.Build. For more information, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=317569.

That link assumes that I'll want to turn package restore on. So does every other bit of advice I've managed to find so far on this subject.

I tried disabling Package Restore in Options -> Package Manager -> General settings, by the way. That doesn't help (and even if it did, it would be undesirable - I use package restore in everything else I work on).

I don't really understand why I'm getting this in a solution that doesn't use package restore. As I understand it, the whole point of the package it's asking for is to support package restore. So in a solution in which package restore is not in use, it seems odd for this package to be present.

However, it appears that certain other nuget packages cause you to depend on this. I have a Windows Runtime Component project that uses Microsoft.Bcl, a nuget package that, for some reason, has a dependency on Microsoft.Bcl.Build. (Visual Studio seemed to add the Microsoft.Bcl package for me when I created the project. Presumably it's necessary.) Other projects seem to acquire a dependency on Microsoft.Bcl.Build via the HTTP client libraries.

So apparently, certain common nuget packages appear to force a dependency on Microsoft.Bcl.Build whether or not you're using package restore.

That would be fine if you could eliminate the warning simply by adding the relevant package to all projects that get this warning. But the vexing thing is that even if I add the Microsoft.Bcl.Build package to the consuming components (e.g., my WinJS Window Store app) I still get this warning! (So it continues to complain that I need to install the nuget package even after I have installed it.)

Does anyone know how to eliminate this warning in this situation? Doing what it asks me to do doesn't seem to be sufficient. What's missing?

Answer 1

I had the same issue. Updating the Microsoft.Bcl.Build package from 1.0.13 to 1.0.14 solved my problem.

Answer 2

We recently had the same issue. Using Nuget 2.8, BCL build 1.0.14, BCL 1.1.9, we had a project A using BCL build, that was referenced by another project B.

Short story: Project B compilation gave the mentioned error although the packaged were added to it. The solution was to remove the packages and re-add them. We ended up doing that for both project A and B.

I believe the cause of the problem was a mismatch in versions. The original project referenced BCL 1.1.8 (the latest version when it was created) was while project B automatically used the more recent BCL 1.1.9.

I am not sure if that's relevant but on the first time we added packages using the project->NuGet package manager, and on the 2'nd time we used the NuGet Console (Tools->Nuget->console).

The remove,add caused a distinct difference in the csproj of project B. the following lines were added:

<Import Project="..\..\..\packages\Microsoft.Bcl.Build.1.0.14\tools\Microsoft.Bcl.Build.targets" Condition="Exists('..\..\..\packages\Microsoft.Bcl.Build.1.0.14\tools\Microsoft.Bcl.Build.targets')" />