NuGet Package Restore, Multiple Repositories, and CI Servers

I really like NuGet’s new Package Restore feature (and so does our git repositories).

We have several common libraries that we’ve moved into a private, local NuGet repository on our network. It’s really helped deal with the dependency and version nightmares between projects and developers.

I checked my first project using full package restore and our new local repositories into our CI server, TeamCity, the other day and noticed that the Package Restore feature couldn’t find the packages stored in our local repository.

At first, I thought there was a snag (permissions, network, general unhappiness) with our NuGet share, but all seemed well. To my surprise, repository locations are not stored in that swanky .nuget directory, but as part of the current user profile. %appdata%\NuGet\NuGet.Config to be precise.

Well, that’s nice on my workstation, but NETWORK SERVICE doesn’t have a profile and the All Users AppData directory didn’t seem to take effect.

The solution:

For TeamCity, at least, the solution was to set the TeamCity build agent services to run as a specific user (I chose a domain user in our network, you could use a local user as well). Once you have a profile, go into %drive%:\users\{your service name}\appdata\roaming\nuget and modify the nuget.config file.

Here’s an example of the file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <packageSources>
    <add key="NuGet official package source" value="https://msft.long.url.here" />
    <add key="Student Achievement [local]" value="\\server.domain.com\shared$\nuget" />
  </packageSources>
  <activePackageSource>
    <add key="NuGet official package source" value="https://msft.long.url.here" />
  </activePackageSource>
</configuration>

Package Restore will attempt to find the packages on the ‘activePackageSource’ first then proceed through the list.

Remember, if you have multiple build agent servers, this must be done on each server.

Wish List: The option to include non-standard repositories as part of the .nuget folder. 🙂