How to include file in the root of a project?

[pavele]

Details about Problem

NuGet product used: Package Manager Console and VS UI
NuGet version (x.x.x.xxx): 3.+
dotnet.exe --version (if appropriate): 2.0
VS version (if appropriate): 2017, 15.3.4
OS version (i.e. win10 v1607 (14393.321)): Windows 10

I'm unable to create a nuget package that simply adds a file in the root of the project. I've tried everything - nuspec with content, contentFiles, msbuild (csproj) project ContentTargetFolders and PackagePath. I'm simply unable to accomplish such simple task. I'm able to include files as links in a content folder but this is not working for me since the files physically are in the nuget folders in my profile.
Think of the following simple scenario - create a nuget package with an ".eslintrc" file that is physically located in the root of the project.

Thanks,
Pavel

[rohit21agrawal]

@pavele by the root of the project, you mean the root of the nupkg?

[nkolev92]

There are multiple ways you can achieve this.

First of all though, we'd strongly discourage shipping things like a linter through a package.
While it is possible, you shouldn't normally need to "dump" files in the project's root directory.

I would suggest you do this by including a target file that would do the copying for you.

More info here:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/nuget/create-packages/creating-a-package#including-msbuild-props-and-targets-in-a-package

[dasMulli]

You may want to consider shipping a template as a NuGet package instead of trying to make a NuGet package add files to a project.

$ dotnet new -i MyCompany.Templates.ESLint #downloads the template package from nuget feeds
$ dotnet new mycompany-eslint #drops an .eslintrc file

[pavele]

Thanks everyone for the prompt replies.

@rohit21agrawal I'm looking for approach to put files in the .net core project

@nkolev92 I'd be very happy to see if there is a different, better approach instead of dumping linter files. The current state with linters, stylecop, etc in my view is complete mess. StyleCop analyzers use 2 different types of config - rulesets and the stylecop.json. The linter and the editorconfig files should be placed in the root folder - for linters it is because the tools don't "understand" the .csproj model and for .editorconfig it is again similar reason - the editors don't use .csproj a lot. But using msbuilds files that are refenrenced by the nuspec just to copy file in the root of a project sounds like complete overkill to me. In case this is by design then all of the documentation available on MSDN related to content and content files is not explaining it correctly.
If there is guidance, recommended approach, sample, etc. that you know I'll be more than happy to use it.

@dasMulli - this is not a working approach since it will force the projects to be recreated and then again any subsequent updates will recreation of projects.

[dasMulli]

I understand the difficulty, but I was referring to item templates, not project templates. so you'd just rm .eslintrc; dotnet new my company-eslint. Maybe the templating engine needs a recreation option for item templates 🤔
It is just a suggestion, might not be useful in all scenarios but since there's a good templating engine now, I try to make use of it.

[jainaashish]

@pavele I understand your confusion about content vs contentFiles and we'll try our best to make it more understandable and readable going forward.

Please go through https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/nuget/schema/nuspec#including-content-files which gives a little better idea about these techniques. Essentially, Content were for Packages.Config based projects which are now kind of obsolete and we don't recommend anyone to use it since they won't be compatible with new world like PackageReference. So ContentFiles is the way going forward but with ContentFiles, it's all shared resources across projects which lives in global packages folder and never made local to the project. Although if you just need these content as part of build output folder then you can set copyToOutput to true. But there is no out of the box support to make it project resource as of now so unfortunately you will need to write your own target for that. If you can we can help you with writing this target to copy content.

[rohit21agrawal]

@pavele other alternative is to write a msbuild target in your nuget package that runs before build that copies over the file to the root of your project.

[pavele]

@jainaashish Thank you for the information, I've read this posting here and than you for your help, we'll handle this.
I agree that the concept of Content Files can explained better. The problem that I see is that there is no explanation about what happens with the files and the fact that these are supposed to be stored in the global packages folder. Especially this sentence "Configuration files for the package that need to be included in the project but don't need any project-specific changes". Then below the samples are with .css files which are expected to be modified. Exactly this piece is probably to root of the problem in the docs - I'd never expect that the .css files will be places in a folder outside of the project.
Actually I'd never expect a package manager to place something outside the project folder or even if it is possible it should not be the default behavior.
I believe that this has been carefully considered as design approach but in my view it is going to cause problems in the future. It is going to make the project structure more complex since it will rely in external references which are described in the project files. Having projects which don't reside in one folder will "move" the abstraction of the file system to the project files. The developers (I guess) will face more problems since the whole concept is going to be more complex and thus error prone.

Btw another are that I consider problematic is the implementation of the target/props. The fact that the changes are "hiddenly" applied on files in the "Obj" folder could again lead to a lot of problems/errors. It is similar problem in my view - some changes or project artifacts will be stored in locations which are not the "standard" like file in the root of the project.

[lucapivato]

Cannot find a way to "copy files to the project root" as it's documented in Microsoft's latest nuget docs (1/25/2021):

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/nuget/create-packages/creating-a-package#including-msbuild-props-and-targets-in-a-package

content

Arbitrary files

Contents are copied to the project root. Think of the content folder as the root of the target application that ultimately consumes the package. To have the package add an image in the application's /images folder, place it in the package's content/images folder.

Tried content and contentFiles (not documented) but nothing copies project into the root. Only way is to run a target that copies the files on compilation, which is too late. If nuget doesn't support this basic feature would you please document it and maybe provide an alternative or an enhancement request?

I understand you discourage copying files into a project, but it's a quite common and normal requirement in several real-world cases where files should be copied into a project.