Central Package Management

Dependency management is a core feature of NuGet. Managing dependencies for a single project can be easy. Managing dependencies for multi-project solutions can prove to be difficult as they start to scale in size and complexity. In situations where you manage common dependencies for many different projects, you can leverage NuGet’s central package management features to do all of this from the ease of a single location.

Historically, NuGet package dependencies have been managed in two main locations:

• packages.config – An XML file used in older project types to maintain the list of packages referenced by the project.
• <PackageReference /> – An XML element used in new project types that manages NuGet dependencies directly within project files.

Starting with NuGet 6.2, you can centrally manage your dependencies in your projects with the addition of a Directory.Packages.props file.

The feature is available across all NuGet integrated tooling.

• Visual Studio 2022 17.2 and later
• .NET SDK 6.0.300 and later
• .NET SDK 7.0.0-preview.4 and later
• nuget.exe 6.2.0 and later

Older tooling will ignore Central Package Management configurations and features. To use this feature to the fullest extent, ensure all your build environments use the latest compatible tooling versions.

Central Package Management will apply to all <PackageReference> projects – including legacy .csproj – as long as compatible tooling is used.

Enabling Central Package Management

To get started with central package management, you can create a Directory.Packages.props file at the root of your solution and set the MSBuild property ManagePackageVersionsCentrally to true.

Inside, you can define each of the respective package versions required of your solution using <PackageVersion /> elements that define the package ID and version.

<Project>
  <PropertyGroup>
    <ManagePackageVersionsCentrally>true</ManagePackageVersionsCentrally>
  </PropertyGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageVersion Include="Newtonsoft.Json" Version="13.0.1" />
  </ItemGroup>
</Project>

Within a project of the solution, you can then use the respective <PackageReference /> syntax you know and love, but without a Version attribute to infer the centrally managed version instead.

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">

  <PropertyGroup>
    <TargetFramework>net6.0</TargetFramework>
  </PropertyGroup>

  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="Newtonsoft.Json" />
  </ItemGroup>
</Project>

Now you’re using central package management and managing your versions in a central location!

Central Package Management rules

The Directory.Packages.props file has a number of rules with regards to where it’s located in a repository’s directory and its context. For the sake of simplicity, only one Directory.Packages.props file is evaluated for a given project.

What this means is that if you had multiple Directory.Packages.props files in your repository, the file that is closest to your project’s directory will be evaluated for it. This allows you extra control at various levels of your repository.

Here’s an example, consider the following repository structure:

Repository
 |-- Directory.Packages.props
 |-- Solution1
     |-- Directory.Packages.props
     |-- Project1
 |-- Solution2
     |-- Project2

• Project1 will evaluate the Directory.Packages.props file in the Repository\Solution1\ directory.
• Project2 will evaluate the Directory.Packages.props file in the Repository\ directory.

Get started

To fully onboard your repository, consider taking these steps:

1. Create a new file at the root of your repository named Directory.Packages.props that declares your centrally defined package versions in.
2. Declare <PackageVersion /> items in your Directory.Packages.props.
3. Declare <PackageReference /> items without Version attributes in your project files.

Transitive pinning

You can automatically override a transitive package version even without an explicit top-level <PackageReference /> by opting into a feature known as transitive pinning. This promotes a transitive dependency to a top-level dependency implicitly on your behalf when necessary.

You can enable this feature by setting the MSBuild property CentralPackageTransitivePinningEnabled to true in a project or in a Directory.Packages.props or Directory.Build.props import file:

  <PropertyGroup>
    <CentralPackageTransitivePinningEnabled>true</CentralPackageTransitivePinningEnabled>
  </PropertyGroup>

Overriding package versions

You can override an individual package version by using the VersionOverride property on a <PackageReference /> item. This overrides any <PackageVersion /> defined centrally.

<Project>
  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageVersion Include="PackageA" Version="1.0.0" />
    <PackageVersion Include="PackageB" Version="2.0.0" />
  </ItemGroup>
</Project>

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <TargetFramework>net6.0</TargetFramework>
  </PropertyGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="PackageA" VersionOverride="3.0.0" />
  </ItemGroup>
</Project>

You can disable this feature by setting the MSBuild property CentralPackageVersionOverrideEnabled to false in a project or in a Directory.Packages.props or Directory.Build.props import file:

  <PropertyGroup>
    <CentralPackageVersionOverrideEnabled>false</CentralPackageVersionOverrideEnabled>
  </PropertyGroup>

When this feature is disabled, specifying a VersionOverride on any <PackageReference /> item will result in an error at restore time indicating that the feature is disabled.

Disabling Central Package Management

If you’d like to disable central package management for any reason, you can disable this feature by setting the MSBuild property ManagePackageVersionsCentrally to false:

<PropertyGroup>
  <ManagePackageVersionsCentrally>false</ManagePackageVersionsCentrally>
</PropertyGroup>

Warning when using multiple package sources

When using central package management, you will see a NU1507 warning if you have more than one package source defined in your configuration. To resolve this warning, map your package sources with package source mapping or specify a single package source.

There are 3 package sources defined in your configuration. When using central package management, please map your package sources with package source mapping (https://aka.ms/nuget-package-source-mapping) or specify a single package source.

Closing

We hope that these features will help improve your productivity of managing your dependencies as they scale with your projects, promote healthy security best practices, and empower your team to achieve more with the ease of a single location. There is currently no support in Visual Studio or the .NET CLI for Central Package Management.

Feedback

This feature is considered in preview and is under active development. Your feedback is important to us. If there are any problems with this feature, check our GitHub Issues. For new issues within this experience, please report a GitHub Issue. To help us with documentation, please feel free to contribute and ask questions on how we can explain the feature further.