NuGet packages and the bin folder in ASP.NET Web Pages site

Question

This is probably a very basic question but what's the mechanism for DLLs under the packages folder to get copied into the bin folder?

As an example, I have a solution that contains a single "project" (node) of type Web Site (i.e., no csproj, just file-system-based). It is a very basic static website. I want to add ASP.NET Web Pages support so I install this NuGet package and now there are some DLLs under the packages folder and my web.config has been updated. However, when I run the site, it shows YSOD with the error "Could not determine which version of ASP.NET Web Pages to use" which I guess is because there is no bin folder with DLLs in it (when I create a "Razor" site from scratch in Visual Studio, the bin folder is there). If I try to rebuild the solution, it fails with the same error which is compilation error (not runtime error) this time.

What's the command or mechanism to restore the bin folder from the packages folder? I don't want to have DLLs in my source control and according to NuGet docs, it seems that this workflow is very much supported. I guess that if it were csproj-based project, there would be some MS Build action or something like that to use the DLLs from the packages folder but this is a website and I cannot define advanced build actions, can I?

Answer 1

Using Visual Studio 2013, when I install a NuGet package, such as Microsoft.AspNet.Razor, into an ASP.NET web pages application then the bin folder is created.

Getting the binaries into the bin folder is part of the build process and it is not done by NuGet. NuGet can be used to restore the files into the packages folder but will not do anything with your bin folder when restoring.

For building and package restore to work it looks like you need to keep the bin folder and any .refresh files. You can remove the other binaries from your version control system.

System.Web.Razor.dll.refresh

The contents of this file tells Visual Studio where to find the NuGet packages:

 ..\..\Projects\MyWebSite\packages\Microsoft.AspNet.Razor.3.1.2\lib\net45\System.Web.Razor.dll

To test this, I deleted all the binaries from the bin folder, removed the packages folder, and then rebuilt the project. Visual Studio restores the packages and when building copies the required assemblies to the project's bin folder.