Add project properties for consuming apps to a NuGet package

blog@martdegraaf.nl (Mart de Graaf) — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Introduction

For a recent project, I wanted to add a property to the consuming applications from within my NuGet package. This prevents making a pull request for every consuming application with a .csproj change.

📓 Please note in this example the NuGet package has the ID: MyProject.ExampleNuGet, so replace that value for your nuget package. The consuming application is MyProject.ConsumingWebApi.

NuGet file structure

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MyProject.ExampleNuGet  (Repository level)
 ┣ MyProject.ExampleNuGet
 ┃ ┣ Extensions
 ┃ ┃ ┗ MySpecialThing.cs
 ┃ ┣ MyProject.ExampleNuGet.csproj
 ┃ ┗ MyProject.ExampleNuGet.props
 ┣ MyProject.ExampleNuGet.sln
 ┗ nuget.config

MyProject.ExampleNuGet.props

The NuGet package has a .props-file to enforce some properties to the consumers.

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    true
    
    $(NoWarn);1591

MyProject.ExampleNuGet.csproj

Important is to set the build action of the MyProject.ExampleNuGet.props file to package it to the build directory. See the example below:

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 Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">

  
    net6.0
  

  
     Update="MyProject.ExampleNuGet.props" Pack="true" PackagePath="build">
    
  

Conclusion

When installing this package on for example MyProject.ConsumingWebApi a file is generated in de build folder MyProject.ConsumingWebApi.csproj.nuget.g.targets. This ensures the setting is on when building MyProject.ConsumingWebApi.

References

I used the following resources to fix my problem.