NuGet provides an easy and a very efficient solution to distribute packages. A NuGet package can contain assemblies, content files and other tools that you want to distribute. A NuGet package is described by a manifest file known as nuspec. View the nuspec reference.

You can use 3 sub folders \lib \content and \tools in the NuGet package structure. \lib is used to store the assemblies, \content folder is used to store scripts, images, style sheets, ect… and finally \tools folder contains power shell scripts which mostly handle the package events (installation of the package, un-installation of the package)

\content folder also contains the transformation files which apply changes to files such as web.config and app.config. NuGet packages can also be used to insert code and create code files.

You can create NuGet packages either using visual designer or command line. In order to use the command line, we need NuGet.exe which can be downloaded from this link.

Open CMD and go to NuGet.exe path (or you can add the NuGet.exe path to environment variable to access it from anywhere)

Type the following command to make sure that you’re running the latest version of NuGet.exe

NuGet Update –self

Then we have to create the nuspec for the package. Create the above mentioned 3 folders and copy the assemblies inside the \lib. You can have sub folders inside the those folders. For example you can have \content\images to store images and when your package is referenced it will create a folder named ‘images’ in the project.

After setting up the file and folder structure, run the following command to create the nuspec file.

nuget spec

This will create the nuspec manifest file with tokens for the parameters like author, owner, description, urls and ect. Open this nuspec file and enter those details. A sample nuspec file looks like this.

   1: <?xml version="1.0"?>

   2: <package >

   3:   <metadata>

   4:     <id>Package</id>

   5:     <version>1.0.0</version>

   6:     <authors>Thuru</authors>

   7:     <owners>Thuru</owners>

   8:     <licenseUrl>https://thuruinhttp.wordpress.com</licenseUrl>

   9:     <projectUrl>https://thuruinhttp.wordpress.com</projectUrl>

  10:     <iconUrl>http://ICON_URL_HERE_OR_DELETE_THIS_LINE</iconUrl>

  11:     <requireLicenseAcceptance>false</requireLicenseAcceptance>

  12:     <description>Package description</description>

  13:     <releaseNotes>Summary of changes made in this release of the package.</releaseNotes>

  14:     <copyright>Copyright 2014</copyright>

  15:     <tags>Tag1 Tag2</tags>

  16:     <dependencies>

  17:     </dependencies>

  18:   </metadata>

  19: </package>

Once the nuspec file (consider the name is mypackage.nuspec) is created, you can create the NuGet package. Run the below command to create the NuGet package

nuget pack mypackage.nuspec

This will create the NuGet package. You may get errors and warnings based on some values in the nuspec.

This the structure used. (Note here I’ve copied the NuGet.exe in my working folder because I didn’t set the environment variable)