Package Manager Console in Visual Studio

Introduction

The Package Manager Console is a PowerShell console within Visual Studio used to interact with NuGet and automate Visual Studio. You can access the Package Manager Console from within Visual Studio by going to Tools -> Library Package Manager -> Package Manager Console.



The following is a screen shot for the console:



Benefits of using Package Manager Console (PMC)

So, why should you bother to use PMC given that you have a nice UI for the NuGet system integrated in Visual Studio? The following are the benefits of using PMC over the NuGet UI:

• Using PMC, you can automate the addition of packages into your solution instead of each team member going to the NuGet UI to add packages.
  
• The PMC scripts can be part of the Visual Studio solution itself so that any new team member can simply run those scripts when setting up the solution.
  
• NuGet will always install the latest version of a package however, using PMC you can specify the version number of the package to install.
  
• PMC is useful if you wish to manage the dependencies manually without using NuGet, for example to install a package without dependencies use the flag -IgnoreDependencies.
  
• PMC can also be useful to reinstall a package using the -reinstall flag. This provides a kind of repair functionality.
  
• The PMC scripts can also be part of the continuous integration system.
  
• PMC is not just an alternative to NuGet. Many packages add commands to PMC for additional functionality. For example: EntityFramework adds a host of commands to manage code first migrations.
  

Let's see some quick examples of the usage. Now, you can go ahead and type a command to install a new package in your project:



To get help on any command, you can type the command Get-help <command>.



You can press the Tab key after entering a few characters to trigger the autocomplete functionality. You can even resolve the package names using the Tab key when using the install-package command.



You can change the default project from the top right drop down. The commands will be applied to the selected project only.