Pain-free local development while also referencing NuGet packages

Question

I am attempting to publish and consume versioned NuGet packages of class libraries while avoiding headaches for local development. Here is a sample Visual Studio solution la

Answer 1

Unfortunately, there really isn't a way to have the best of both worlds. Internally in my company, we've mitigated it somewhat with a fast build/deploy process, which counteracts most of the burdens with always referencing a NuGet package. Basically, all of our applications use a different version of the same library hosted in a local NuGet repository. Since we use our own software to build, deploy, and host the packages, it makes it pretty quick to update the library, then update its NuGet package in another solution. Essentially, the fastest workflow we've found is this:

1. Make changes to library
2. Automatically build and deploy version of library incremented by 1 to internal NuGet feed
3. Update NuGet package in consumer application

The whole process from check-in to updating the consuming project takes around 3 minutes. The NuGet repository also has a symbol/source server which helps tremendously with debugging.