Publish Nuget Packages In .NET Core

Problem

How to create and publish NuGet package in .NET Core.

Solution

The first setup is to have a registry set up to host the packages, I’ll use nuget.org.

Create a new key by giving it a name, scopes (permissions), and selecting packages (* means all).

You’ll see a new key added. Copy the key by clicking on the “Copy” link and paste it somewhere safe.

Now that you have a registry and key to upload your packages, let’s create and publish a package. I am using here a simple .NET Core class library I wrote to work with CSV files, the source code can be found on GitHub. You can, of course, use any of your projects.

Open a Command Prompt in your project directory.

Run dotnet pack command to create a NuGet package (by default this will also build the project).

dotnet pack -o publish -c Release --version-suffix alpha

Options used are,

-o is the path where package is created
-c specifies build configuration
--version-suffix specifies that this is a pre-release. You can omit this for your final release

You’ll have the NuGet package created in the publish folder

Run dotnet nuget push command to upload NuGet package to nuget.org.

dotnet nuget push Fiver.Lib.Csv.1.0.0-alpha.nupkg -s https://www.nuget.org -k <api-key>

Options used are,

-s specifies the URL to the server where you’re uploading the package
-k specifies the API key that identifies you on the server.

Browse to your NuGet website and you’ll find your package,

You could also specify other properties in .csproj that adds metadata to your NuGet package, e.g.,

<PropertyGroup>
<Authors>Tahir Naushad</Authors>
<Title>CSV Reader/Writer Library</Title>
<Description>This is a library that makes reading and writing CSV files easy</Description>
<VersionPrefix>1.0.1</VersionPrefix>
<VersionSuffix>beta</VersionSuffix>
</PropertyGroup>

Run dotnet pack command again and open the package in NuGet Package Explorer to view the properites.

For more information on various properties you could set, please see details here.