Is it possible to change the location of packages for NuGet

Question

I have the following convention for most of my projects    src      Solution sln      SolutionFolder          Project1          Project2          etc    lib      Moq         moq dll         license txt      Yui-Compressor         yui compressor dll  tools      ILMerge         ilmerge exe   You ll notice that I do not keep external libraries inside the source folder  I m also very interested in using NuGet but don t want these external libraries inside the source folder  Does NuGet have a setting to change the directory that all packages are loaded into

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Just updating with Nuget 2 8 3  To change the location of installed packages   I enabled package restore from right clicking solution  Edited NuGet Config and added these lines       lt config gt       lt add key  repositorypath  value     Core Packages    gt     lt  config gt    Then rebuilt the solution  it downloaded all packages to my desired folder and updated references automatically

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None of this answers was working for me  Nuget 2 8 6  because of missing some tips  will try to add them here as it might be useful for others   After reading the following sources   https   docs nuget org consume NuGet-Config-Settings https   github com NuGet Home issues 1346 It appears that   To make working Install-Package properly with different repositoryPath you need to use forward slashes  it s because they are using Uri object to parse location  Without   on the begining it was still ignoring my settings  NuGet caches config file  so after modifications you need to reload solution VS  I had also strange issue while using command of NuGet exe to set this option  as it modified my global NuGet exe under AppData Roaming NuGet and started to restore packages there  Since that file has higher priority  just guessing     E g     lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8   gt   lt configuration gt     lt solution gt       lt add key  disableSourceControlIntegration  value  true    gt     lt  solution gt     lt config gt       lt add key  repositorypath  value             Common packages    gt     lt  config gt   lt  configuration gt    You can also use NuGet command to ensure that syntax will be correct like this   NuGet exe config -Set repositoryPath            Common packages -ConfigFile NuGet Config

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One more little tidbit that I just discovered   This may be so basic that some haven t mentioned it  but it was important for my solution   The  packages  folder ends up in the same folder as your  sln file   We moved our  sln file and then fixed all of the paths inside to find the various projects and voila  Our packages folder ended up where we wanted it

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It s now possible to control which folder the packages are installed into    http   nuget codeplex com workitem 215  Edit  See Phil Haack s comment on Dec 10 2010 at 11 45 PM  in the work item the link above   The support is partially implemented in 1 0  but is not documented   According to  dfowler  Add a nuget config file next to the solution with this    lt settings gt   lt repositoryPath gt  some path here  lt  repositoryPath gt   lt  settings gt    There is a nuget package for creating the package folder override   Update for version 2 1  As Azat commented  there is now official documentation on how to control the package locations  The release notes for 2 1 specifies the following configuration in a nuget config file  see the release notes for a description of valid places to put the config files and how the hierarchical configuration model works     lt configuration gt     lt config gt       lt add key  repositoryPath  value  C  thePathToMyPackagesFolder    gt     lt  config gt          lt  configuration gt    This would change the packages folder for the configuration level you put the file in  solution if you put it in the solution directory  project in project directory and so on   Note that the release notes state             if you have an existing packages folder underneath your solution   root  you will need to delete it before NuGet will place packages in   the new location

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The solution proposed in release notes for 2 1 doesn t work out-of-the-box  They forgot to mention that there is code   internal string ResolveInstallPath         if   string IsNullOrEmpty this OutputDirectory                 return this OutputDirectory            ISettings settings   this  configSettings               which prevents it from working  To fix this you need to modify your NuGet targets file and remove  OutputDirectory  parameter        lt RestoreCommand gt   NuGetCommand  install    PackagesConfig   -source    PackageSources      RequireConsentSwitch  lt  RestoreCommand gt    So now  if you add  repositoryPath  config somewhere in NuGet config  see the release notes for a description of valid places to put the config files   it will restore all packages into single location  but    Your  csproj still contains hints to assemblies written as relative paths     I still don t understand why they went hard way instead of changing PackageManager so it would add hint paths relative to PackagesDir  That s the way I do manually to have different package locations locally  on my desktop  and on build agent    lt Reference Include  Autofac Configuration  Version 2 6 3 862  Culture neutral  PublicKeyToken 17863af14b0044da  processorArchitecture MSIL  gt     lt Private gt True lt  Private gt     lt HintPath gt   PackagesDir  Autofac 2 6 3 862 lib NET40 Autofac Configuration dll lt  HintPath gt   lt  Reference gt

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UPDATE for VS 2017   Looks people in Nuget team finally started to use Nuget themselves which helped them to find and fix several important things  So now  if I m not mistaken  as still didn t migrated to VS 2017  the below is not necessary any more  You should be able to set the  repositoryPath  to a local folder and it will work  Even you can leave it at all as by default restore location moved out of solution folders to machine level  Again - I still didn t test it by myself  VS 2015 and earlier   Just a tip to other answers  specifically this    Location of the NuGet Package folder can be changed via configuration  but VisualStudio still reference assemblies in this folder relatively    lt HintPath gt                   SomeAssembly lib net45 SomeAssembly dll lt  HintPath gt    To workaround this  until a better solution  I used subst command to create a virtual drive which points to a new location of the Packages folder   subst N  C  Development NuGet Packages   Now when adding a new NuGet package  the project reference use its absolute location    lt HintPath gt N  SomeAssembly lib net45 SomeAssembly dll lt  HintPath gt    Note    Such a virtual drive will be deleted after restart  so make sure you handle it Don t forget to replace existing references in project files

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In order to change the path for projects using PackageReference instead of packages config you need to use globalPackagesFolder  From https   docs microsoft com en-us nuget reference nuget-config-file     globalPackagesFolder  projects using PackageReference only       The location of the default global packages folder  The default is    userprofile  nuget packages  Windows  or    nuget packages    Mac Linux   A relative path can be used in project-specific   nuget config files  This setting is overridden by the NUGET PACKAGES   environment variable  which takes precedence       repositoryPath  packages config only       The location in which to install NuGet packages instead of the default   Solutiondir  packages   folder  A relative path can be used in project-specific nuget config   files  This setting is overridden by the NUGET PACKAGES environment   variable  which takes precedence     lt config gt       lt add key  globalPackagesFolder  value  c  packageReferences    gt       lt add key  repositoryPath  value  c  packagesConfig    gt   lt  config gt    I put Nuget config next to my solution file and it worked

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Okay for the sake of anyone else reading this post - here is what I understand of the myriad of answers above    The nuget config file in the  nuget folder is relative to that folder   This is important because if your new folder is something like     Packages  that will put it where it always goes out of the box   As  bruce14 states you must do        Packages  instead I could not get the latest nuget  2 8 5  to find a packages folder outside of the standard location without enabling package restore   So once you enable package restore then the following should be added to the nuget config file inside of the  nuget folder to change the location    lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8   gt   lt configuration gt           lt config gt       lt add key  repositoryPath  value        Packages    gt     lt  config gt         lt  configuration gt    This is important  If you make ANY changes to the package folder location inside of the nuget config files you must restart visual studio or close reload the solution for the changes to take effect

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A solution for Nuget 3 2 on Visual Studio 2015 is    lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8   gt   lt configuration gt       lt config gt           lt add key  repositoryPath  value     lib    gt       lt  config gt   lt  configuration gt    Using forward slash for parent folder  Save above file  nuget config  in solution folder   Reference is available here

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Create nuget config in same directory where your solution file is  with following content    lt  xml version  quot 1 0 quot  encoding  quot utf-8 quot   gt   lt configuration gt     lt config gt       lt add key  quot repositoryPath quot  value  quot packages quot    gt     lt  config gt   lt  configuration gt    packages  will be the folder where all packages will be restored   Close Visual studio solution and open it again

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The config file in the accepted answer works for me in VS2012  However  for me it only works when I do the following    Create a new project in VS  Exit VS - this seems to be important  Copy the config files to the project folder  Restart VS and add packages    If I follow those steps I can use a shared package folder

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Created a file called  nuget config   Added that file to my solutions folder   this did NOT work for me    lt configuration gt     lt config gt       lt add key  repositoryPath  value     ExtLibs Packages    gt     lt  config gt          lt  configuration gt    this did WORK for me    lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8   gt   lt settings gt     lt repositoryPath gt    ExtLibs Packages lt  repositoryPath gt   lt  settings gt

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The most consistent way is by using nuget config to explicitly set the config  nuget config -set repositoryPath c  packages -configfile c  my config  https   docs microsoft com en-us nuget consume-packages configuring-nuget-behavior changing-config-settings

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In addition to Shane Kms answer  if you ve activated Nuget Package Restore  you edit the NuGet config located in the  nuget-folder as follows    lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8   gt   lt configuration gt     lt repositoryPath gt       ExtLibs Packages lt  repositoryPath gt   lt  configuration gt    Notice the extra        as it backtracks from the  nuget-folder and not the solution folder

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For  NET Core projects and Visual Studio 2017 I was able to restore all packages to relative path by providing this configuration    lt configuration gt     lt config gt       lt add key  globalPackagesFolder  value  lib    gt     lt  config gt          lt  configuration gt    Based on my experience the lib folder was created on the same level where Nuget config was found  no matter where sln file was  I tested and the behavior is same for command line dotnet restore  and Visual Studio 2017 rebuild

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