NuGets aren't just for Binaries any more... Using NuGet to deliver code sample packages

David Ebbo - Take NuGet to the next level with sample packages

"NuGet has drastically simplified the process of getting .NET libraries into your projects. What used to be an error prone and painful process has become as simple as adding an assembly reference.

While it has solved an important part of the developer workflow, it has the potential to also solve another key piece of the puzzle: helping user learn to use libraries.

I found these cool packages, but now what?

There are tons of cool packages available on NuGet today, and the number is growing daily. I’ve heard of a number of users who go down the list and install all kind of packages into their projects to try them out. But if you’re not familiar with a library, how do you get started with it?

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I took Clay as an example, but this is a fairly typical experience. The fact is that a lot of knowledge about immature (yet useful) projects only exists in ‘blog post series’ rather than in any formal documentation. Not ideal, but that’s how things happen.

NuGet to the rescue with Sample Packages

Luckily, there is a simple and effective solution to this problem: use NuGet to distribute basic samples that get your users on the right path with less pain.

So to illustrate this post, I went ahead and created one such package for Clay: Clay.Sample. This package depends on Clay, such that installing it also installs Clay (as well as other things Clay depends on, like Castle).

It’s a ‘source only’ package, meaning that it doesn’t contain any binaries of its own. ...

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Creating the package

Taking Clay as an example, here is the structure of the files before packing them into a nupkg:

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As dev's we love to learn from code and we're all also falling in love with NuGet; David shows us how to mix them together into one yummy nupkg...