How do I get NuGet to install/update all the packages in the packages.config?

You can use nuget.exe to restore your packages or with NuGet 2.7, or above, installed you can simply compile your solution in Visual Studio, which will also restore the missing packages.

For NuGet.exe you can run the following command for each project.

nuget install packages.config

Or with NuGet 2.7 you can restore all packages in the solution using the command line.

nuget restore YourSolution.sln

Both of these will pull down the packages. Your project files will not be modified however when running this command so the project should already have a reference to the NuGet packages. If this is not the case then you can use Visual Studio to install the packages.

With NuGet 2.7, and above, Visual Studio will automatically restore missing NuGet packages when you build your solution so there is no need to use NuGet.exe.

To update all the packages in your solution, first restore them, and then you can either use NuGet.exe to update the packages or from within Visual Studio you can update the packages from the Package Manager Console window, or finally you can use the Manage Packages dialog.

From the command line you can update packages in the solution to the latest version available from nuget.org.

nuget update YourSolution.sln

Note that this will not run any PowerShell scripts in any NuGet packages.

From within Visual Studio you can use the Package Manager Console to also update the packages. This has the benefit that any PowerShell scripts will be run as part of the update where as using NuGet.exe will not run them. The following command will update all packages in every project to the latest version available from nuget.org.

Update-Package

You can also restrict this down to one project.

Update-Package -Project YourProjectName

If you want to reinstall the packages to the same versions as were previously installed then you can use the -reinstall argument with Update-Package command.

Update-Package -reinstall

You can also restrict this down to one project.

Update-Package -reinstall -Project YourProjectName

The -reinstall option will first uninstall and then install the package back again into a project.

Or, you can update the packages using the Manage Packages dialog.

Updates:

2013/07/10 - Updated with information about nuget restore in NuGet 2.7

2014/07/06 - Updated with information about automatic package restore in Visual Studio and brought the answer up to date with other changes to NuGet.

2014/11/21 - Updated with information about -reinstall

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Open Package Manager Console

View -> Other Windows -> Package Manager Console

Reinstall all packages in ALL PROJECTS of the current solution:

Update-Package -Reinstall

Reinstall all packages in SPECIFIC PROJECT of the current solution (Thanks to unarity and ashes999):

Update-Package -ProjectName 'YourProjectNameGoesHere' -Reinstall

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There is another, newer and quicker way to do this from within Visual Studio. Check out this post by David Ebbo, and reference the comments section if you run into trouble. Basically, you do the following in Package Manager prompt:

PM> Install-Package NuGetPowerTools
PM> Enable-PackageRestore

Afterwards, when you build your solution the packages will be automatically installed if they're missing.

Update:

This functionality is built into Nuget 1.6 with visual studio integration so you don't even need to install NuGetPowerTools or type commands. All you have to do is

Right click on the Solution node in Solution Explorer and select Enable NuGet Package Restore.

Read this article for more details.

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Here's another solution if you are using website projects, or don't want to enable NuGet Package restore.

You can use the package manager console to enumerate all the packages in the package.config file and re-install them.

# read the packages.config file into an XML object
[xml]$packages = gc packages.config

# install each package 
$packages.packages.package | % { Install-Package -id $($_.id) -Version $($_.version) }

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Update-Package -ProjectName 'YourProjectNameGoesHere' -Reinstall

This is best and easiest example I found. It will reinstall all nugets that are listed in packages.config and it will preserve current versions. Replace YourProjectNameGoesHere with the project name.

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With the latest NuGet 2.5 release there is now an "Update All" button in the packages manager: http://docs.nuget.org/docs/release-notes/nuget-2.5#Update_All_button_to_allow_updating_all_packages_at_once

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I'm using visual studio 2015 and the solutions given above didn't work for me, so i did the following:

Delete the packages folder from my solution and also bin and obj folders from every project in the solution and give it a rebuild.

Maybe you will have the next error:

unable to locate nuget.exe

To solve this: Change this line in your NuGet.targets file and setting it to true:

<DownloadNuGetExe Condition=" '$(DownloadNuGetExe)' == '' ">true</DownloadNuGetExe>

Reference:https://stackoverflow.com/a/30918648 and https://stackoverflow.com/a/20502049

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After 3 hours of searching and investigation.

I had problems with it because we have two members in team (using GitHub source control), because we didn't restrict files for packages for sending to remote repository, one of team members was send packages to server and i have pull that changes to my local.

After that i had same problem as PO, also i wasn't be able to publish my API project to server.

At the and I have just used

Update-Package -Reinstall - run this command on Package Manager Console

This command will reinstall all your packages that you have used in your solution. (For every project)

Reinstall all packages in ALL PROJECTS of the current solution:

Update-Package -ProjectName 'NameOfProject' -Reinstall - run this command on Package Manager Console

This command will reinstall all your packages that are in relation with project that you specified after "-ProjectName". And i think that this is better because i had wait for half a hour to reinstall all packages in solution.

For this many thanks to Rodolpho Brock.

Also, I would recommend you that when you pull changes from remote server, to press "Restore packages" button that will be shown by Visual studio.

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I believe the first thing you need to do is enable the package restore feature. See also here. This is done at the solution (not project) level.

But that won't get you all the way -- I ran into a similar issue after having enabled the restore feature. (VS2013, NuGet 2.8.)

It turned out I had (unintentionally) committed the packages to source control when I committed the project -- but Visual Studio (and the source control plugin) had helpfully ignored the binaries when performing the check-in.

The problem arose when I created a release branch. My local copy of the dev/main/trunk branch had the binaries, because that's where I had originally installed/downloaded the packages. However, in the new release branch,

the package folders and .nupkg files were all there -- so NuGet didn't think there was anything to restore;

but at the same time, none of the DLLs were present -- i.e. the third-party references were missing -- so I couldn't build.

I deleted all the package folders in $(SolutionDir)/packages (under the release branch) and then ran a full rebuild, and this time the build succeeded.
... and then of course I went back and removed the package folders from source control (in the trunk and release branch). I'm not clear (yet) on whether the repositories.config file should be removed as well.

Many of the components installed for you by the project templates -- at least for web projects -- are NuGet packages. That is, this issue is not limited to packages you've added.
So enable package restore immediately after creating the project/solution, and before you perform an initial check-in, clear the packages folder (and make sure you commit the .nuget folder to source control).

Disclaimer: I saw another answer here on SO which indicated that clearing the packages folder was part of the resolution. That put me on the right track, so I'd like to give the author credit, but I can no longer locate that question/answer. I'll post an edit if I stumble across it.

I'd also note that Update-Package -reinstall will modify the .sln and .csproj/.vbproj files. At least that's what it did in my case. Which IMHO makes this option much less attractive.

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For those arriving here due to the build server falling foul of this, you can create an MSBuild target running the exec command to run the nuget restore command, as below (in this case nuget.exe is in the .nuget folder, rather than on the path), which can then be run in a TeamCity build step immediately prior to building the solution

<Target Name="BeforeBuild">
  <Exec Command="..\.nuget\nuget restore ..\MySolution.sln"/>
</Target>

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If you Nuget 2.8 install, check the checkbox

Tools >> Nuget Manager >> Package Manager Settings >> Automatically check for missing packages during build

in Visual Studio. If it is checked, then simply rebuild the project will restore all your reference libraries.

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I tried Update-Package -reinstall but it fails on a package and stopped processing all remaining packages of projects in my solution.

I ended up with my script that enumerates all package.config files and run Update-Package -Reinstall -ProjectName prj -Id pkg for each project/package.

Hope it can be useful for someone:

$files = Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Include packages.config;

[array]$projectPackages = @();
$files | foreach { [xml]$packageFile = gc $_; $projectName = $_.Directory.Name; $packageFile.packages.package.id | foreach { $projectPackages += @( ,@( $projectName, $_ ) ) } }

$projectPackages | foreach { Update-Package -Reinstall -ProjectName $_[0] -Id $_[1] }

Edit: This is an error that I had: Update-Package : Unable to find package 'EntityFramework.BulkInsert-ef6'. Existing packages must be restored before performing an install or update. Manual run of Update-Package -Reinstall -ProjectName my_prj -Id EntityFramework.BulkInsert-ef6 worked very well.

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now Nuget Package Manager Console in Visual Studio 2012 gives you a "Restore" button automatically as soon it find any package not installed but in there in package.config. Awesome Feature!

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At VS2012 V11, if I use "-Reinstall" at the end of the line it doesn't work.

So I simply used:

Update-Package -ProjectName 'NAME_OF_THE_PROJECT'

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I know this is an old post, but thought this could be useful. If you have a need to ignore specific packages during the update process (like any packages that update JavaScript references), use the following PowerShell script (make sure your package source is set to "All" in Package Manager Console):

EDIT 2014-09-25 10:55 AM EST - Fixed a bug in the script

$packagePath = "packages.config"
$projectName = "MyProjectName"

$packagesToIgnore = @(
    "bootstrap",
    "jQuery",
    "jquery-globalize",
    "jquery.mobile",
    "jQuery.jqGrid",
    "jQuery.UI.Combined",
    "jQuery.Validation",
    "Microsoft.jQuery.Unobtrusive.Validation",
    "Modernizr",
    "Moment.js"
)

[xml]$packageFile = gc $packagePath
$packagesToProcess = $packageFile.packages.package | Where-Object {$packagesToIgnore -notcontains $_.id}

$packagesToProcess | % { Update-Package -reinstall -projectname $projectName -id $($_.id) }

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Don't know since when, but in VS2019 you can do it in an easier way:

right click solution in Solution Explorer select Manage Nuget Packages for Solution there are 4 tabs, Browse, Installed, Updates, Consolidate the Consolidate shows if there is any projects using different version of packages (and in most cases, that's why we want to update all the packages) the Updates shows if there is any update available in ANY projects. Select all and click update, the job will be done.

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In Visual Studio 2017 - When you compile using IDE - It will download all the missing nuget packages and save in the folder "packages".

But on the build machine compilation was done using msbuild.exe. In that case, I downloaded nuget.exe.

During each build process before executing msbuild.exe. It will execute -> nuget.exe restore NAME_OF_SLN_File (if there is only one .SLN file then you can ignore that parameter).

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