Centralized package management in Visual Studio is a feature that allows you to manage NuGet package dependencies for multiple projects from a single location. This is particularly useful for large solutions with many projects, as it simplifies the process of keeping package versions consistent across the entire solution.
To enable centralized package management, you need to create a Directory.Packages.props
file at the root of your repository and set the MSBuild property ManagePackageVersionsCentrally
to true
. Inside this file, you define the package versions required by your projects using <PackageVersion />
elements. For each project, you then define a <PackageReference />
but omit the Version
attribute, as the version will be obtained from the corresponding <PackageVersion />
item.
Although this is not that much work, if you find this still too cumbersome I have some good news for you; with the latest release of the .NET Upgrade Assistant, you can let the assistant do the migration for you.
Let’s give it a try…
First make sure that the .NET Upgrade Assistant extension is installed in your Visual Studio instance:
-
Open Visual Studio. Go to the Extensions > Manage Extensions menu to open the Extension Manager window.
-
Select the Browse tab.
-
Type .NET upgrade assistant into the search box.
-
Select the .NET Upgrade Assistant item, and then select Install.
Once you have the .NET Upgrade Assistant available inside Visual Studio, we can start the upgrade:
- Right click on a project in your Solution Explorer and click on Upgrade.
- Remark: You have to click on a specific project and NOT on the solution file, otherwise you get a different screen
- Now you get a welcome screen where you can choose the NuGet central package management option.
- As a next step we get a list of all the projects in our solution. Click Next to continue.
- Now we can customize the upgrade process if we want to. The defaults are fine so let’s click Upgrade to start the upgrade process.
- We can monitor the upgrade process on the next screen. That’s it!
More information
NuGet Central Package Management
.NET Upgrade Assistant Now Supports Upgrading to Centralized Package Mangement - .NET Blog
Install .NET Upgrade Assistant - .NET Core | Microsoft Learn