what is the best way to find out if a nuget package is compatible with .net core without nuget.org?

Question

I know nuget.org does not have this functionality yet, but I have been searching for release notes on the nuget package developer websites, and this is taking longer than expected, since I have a lot of nuget packages installed on my .net framework project. Is there a better way to do this? maybe someone has already done it and posted a list somewhere?

thanks in advance

Answer 1

If you change the 'n' in the nuget URL to an 'f', so it becomes fuget, you'll get a list of which frameworks the package targets. If you see it targets a netstandard version then it will work with .NET Core.

Answer 2

If your project is using an "old" style csproj with packages.config, the first step is to migrate to using PackageReference instead. Here's some docs. As the docs say, there are some differences between how packages.config and PackageReference works. If you're affected, you're blocked until you can make your project work with PackageReference.

If your project is using an "old" style csproj with PackageReference (for example you did the migration above), then migrate to SDK-based csproj so you can build with the dotnet CLI. Here's a blog post with details how to do it.. Note you you can keep using the Windows .NET Framework with SDK csproj. Although SDK-based csproj came out at the same time as .NET Core, it's not necessary to use .NET Core with the new project style. If your project is a class library or console app, you're definitely fine, otherwise you need to research to find out if the project type is compatible with SDK projects or not.

Once you have your .NET Framework project working with SDK projects, either change the TargetFramework to netcoreapp or netstandard, or you can multi-target your project by changing TargetFramework to TargetFrameworks, and use a semi-colon separated list of TFMs you want to target. For example <TargetFrameworks>net461;netcoreapp2.1</TargetFrameworks>. Then simply run dotnet restore and if any of the packages you use is not compatible with .NET Core, restore will fail, and you simply revert to target only .NET Framework.

In summary, once your project uses SDK-based csproj, it takes 10 seconds to test if your dependencies are compatible with .NET Standard/.NET Core. If your project is not yet using SDK-based csproj, you undo your change to the TargetFramework(s) line in your csproj and continue with your life until the next time you test again. If you're not already on SDK-based csproj and there's nothing blocking you from doing so, then doing the upgrade is low risk and bring some benefits, such as fewer merge conflicts on the file, much easier to create nupkgs for any packages you maintain, and being able to test against .NET Core compatibility in seconds.

Alternative: If you're unable or unwilling to migrate to SDK-based projects and you want to check if your dependencies are compatible, then use dotnet new classlib to create a new .NET Core project, add package references to the same packages that your existing project uses, then try to restore. If you have a big solution with lots of projects and/or references, just write a small program to read your packages.config/csproj files as XML, find unique list of packages that you use, then write a new SDK-based csproj targeting .NET Core with all the packages you just found as package references.