NuGet, Open Wrap, NPanday, Chocolatey, Chewie, Ninite, top Package/Dependency Management for .Net tools

Visual Studio Magazine - 6 Top .NET Package- and Dependency-Management Tools

They may not be sexy, but package managers are an integral part of every developer's work -- using the right ones can make you more productive. Read on to find out what -- and where -- they are.

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For the app developer or system admin, however, the process of getting utilities, libraries and frameworks installed, along with any required dependencies -- particularly when dealing with the huge ecosystem of open source software -- represents a bigger problem. And this is where package management comes to the rescue.

Package managers help you download, install, configure and update software "packages" from repositories. A package contains the software itself (possibly as source), plus metadata specifying the locations of any dependencies that need to be installed and instructions for automatic compilation, when necessary.

... Here are some great package- and dependency-management tools created specifically for Windows-based development.

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NuGet
NuGet is probably the best-known package and dependency manager for, in Redmond's words, "the Microsoft development platform including .NET." As with the other tools I've mentioned here, NuGet helps you find, install, update and remove packages. However, similar to CocoaPods, NuGet focuses primarily on package and dependency management at the development-project level.

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Open Wrap
OpenWrap is another popular open source package-management sytem for .NET programmers. Created by Sebastien Lambla, OpenWrap is command-line only and supports both OpenWrap and NuGet packages. OpenWrap also includes ReSharper integration, so ReSharper knows about the packages you've installed and doesn't throw up spurious warnings.

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NPanday
NPanday is an Apache Incubator project "to integrate Apache Maven into .NET development environments." Maven is more of a build-automation and dependency-management tool, and also developed more specifically for Java-based development, but developers have figured out how to Maven build for .NET applications.

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Chocolatey NuGet
So, those are the big, established players in package management on Windows. But they're not the only options. Chocolatey is a general-purpose "tools enabler" and "silent application installer" for Windows, modeled after apt-get.

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Chewie
Chewie is yet another NuGet offshoot that attempts to incorporate some features of the Ruby Bundler gem manager into the package\-management workflow on Windows.

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Ninite
OK, Ninite isn't really a package manager in any typical sense of the word, and unlike the rest of the apps I've discussed, it's neither open source itself nor open source focused. But it is a handy utility and it does fall into the same general category as apt-get and Chocolatey.

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You mean there's more than NuGet? No, say it's not so! Kidding aside, this is a great article of tools you might not of heard of before. Make sure you click through to read the details.