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

Update for .NET Core (2.x ++)

.NET Core 2.x actually has this functionality built in!

If you have a project reference to project A in project B, and project A is a .NET Standard or Core project with proper package information (Properties -> Package with Package id set to your NuGet package ID), then you can have a regular project reference in project B's .csproj file:

<ItemGroup>
  <ProjectReference Include="..\..\A\ProjectA.csproj" />
</ItemGroup>

When you pack (dotnet pack) project B, because of the Package id in project A, the generated .nuspec file will be set up with a NuGet dependency to that Package ID, together with other NuGet references you might have, instead of just including the built DLL file.

<dependencies>
  <group targetFramework=".NETStandard2.0">
    <dependency id="Project.A" version="1.2.3" exclude="Build,Analyzers" />
    <dependency id="Newtonsoft.Json" version="12.0.2" exclude="Build,Analyzers" />
  </group>
</dependencies>