What is NuGet and How does it work?

NuGet is a package-management system for .NET and Visual Studio. Take a look at this scenario:

You want to add JQuery library to your project, so you will follow these steps:

1. Go to www. JQuery.com and download the latest Version of JQuery.

2. Unzip the packages

3. Add it to your project

You should follow these 3 steps to add any free package to your project meanwhile, the most time it is not as easy as JQuery package. I am sure that you have faced with so many errors during adding packages and references to your project. The other important issue is that, how you can trust the packages, especially ZIP packages because they may contain viruses and marvels.

The other problem that will be happened after adding references is, how update these packages? How can find the latest version? How can replace it with old version?

These are the problems that you may be faced during manual adding references. NuGet has solved the problems. NuGet is a places that you could find the latest free packages and add them to your project or get the latest update for current references.

For those who use Visual Studio 2010:

By default the 2010 version of visual studio does not support the NuGet, so first you should  install the NuGet extension, please follow these steps:

1. Select tools menu
2. Select Extension manager
3. In the Extension manager page , search NuGet and the download it ( take a look at following screen shut)

Let start Using NuGet to add JQuery to your project:

1. In the solution Explorer panel right click on your References and select Manage NuGet Packages.
2. In the Mange NuGet Packages first click on the online (left panel) then type the JQuery on the search box (right panel) after some seconds you will see the list of items that is related to your search (middle panel). Select JQuery and press Install button.

The latest JQuery is downloaded and added to your project.in the next post I will teach you how to update your current references via NuGet.