Enabling Nuget Automatic Restore

There are three ways that Nuget updates packages:

• Automatically
• MSBuild-Integrate
• Using the command line

Automatically

As of Nuget version 2.7 the package restore should just all work! There are two settings which when checked means that new packages will automatically be downloaded when you build your solution.

For more information see Automatic Package Restore in Visual Studio on nuget.org

MSBuild-Integrate

Previously, you had to right click and Enable Nuget Package Restore from the context menu, which resulted in the Nuget exe actually being added to the solution, along with some config.

So if you see a solution with these files, its actually a legacy approach to Nuget, it should use the previous method mentioned above.

For more information see MSBuild Integrated Package Restore on nuget.org

Problems with Automatic Restore

So sometimes when your working in an old solution and, for example, moving a project out to a nuget package, you might get an error something like:

    Error 1 This project references NuGet package(s) that are missing on this computer

Visual Studio will automatically assume that it is using the old method if it detects the additional nuget files. But be aware, the project in question will also have the following xml in the project file. So, even if these extra nuget files don't exist, you may have managed to get into the state where that error appears. You just need to remove the Xml from the csproj file:

You also need to remove the <RestorePackages>true</RestorePackages> line from the relevant property group.

Source: Migrating MSBuild-Integrated solutions to use Automatic Package Restore

Command Line Restore

From the command line, your using the nuget.exe directly, for example:

   nuget.exe restore my-application.sln

For more information see Command Line Package Restore on nuget.org