mbenford / NuCheck

Little tool to check if there are different versions of a NuGet package in use in a solution

NuCheck

NuGet is a great tool and a great package manager for .NET applications. Unfortunately it currently doesn't alert us when we are trying to add a different version of a package already in use by some other project in a solution. And since the Manage NuGet Packages dialog box always installs the latest version of a package, as we add new projects we can easily end up having several different versions of a package in use across the solution. Despite being a perfectly valid scenario, having multiples versions of an assembly in use can lead to nasty runtime errors.

To help catch this problem earlier in the development process I created NuCheck, a little tool to check if there are different versions of a NuGet package in use in a solution. Just provide it with a solution file and you're done: it'll tell you if everything is fine or if there is something to worry about.

Downloading

You can grab the latest version of NuCheck by accessing the Artifacts page on AppVeyor.

Building from the source code

Building NuCheck from the source code is just a three-step process:

> git clone https://github.com/mbenford/nucheck.git
> cd NuCheck
> build.cmd

When the build script finishes running, NuCheck executable file will be found in the newly created Output directory.

Using NuCheck

NuCheck accepts a solution file as its first command line argument:

> nucheck solution.sln

If different versions of a package are being used by different projects, a summary will be displayed:

> nucheck solution.sln	
2 issues found

Ninject (2 versions)
=> 3.0.0.15 (1 project)
   - Project2
=> 3.0.1.10 (2 projects)
   - Project1
   - Project3

RabbitMQ.Client (3 versions)
=> 3.0.0 (1 project)
   - Project2
=> 3.0.2 (1 project)
   - Project3
=> 3.0.4 (1 project)
   - Project1

Optionally you can pass a pattern as a second argument to NuCheck so it selects only a subset of all packages in use (wildcards are supported):

> nucheck solution.sln ServiceStack*
3 issues found

ServiceStack.Common (2 versions)
=> 3.9.71 (1 project)
   - Project1
=> 4.0.17 (2 projects)
   - Project2
   - Project3

ServiceStack.Redis (3 versions)
=> 3.9.37 (1 project)
   - Project1
=> 3.9.71 (1 project)
   - Project2
=> 4.0.17 (1 project)
   - Project3

As you would expect, NuCheck returns a non-zero exit code when an issue is found so that you can use it as part of a build script and/or a CI system to keep an eye on the packages being added by your team.