visual studio - Project reference VS NuGet

Question

How should I reference to another project A from project B in the same solution?
What do I gain and what do I lose if I:

• Add the reference to project A as a project reference.
• Install the NuGet package of project A in project B.

Things that would bother me are build dependencies, versioning..?
Or does this totally destroy the purpose of a solution?

Answer 1

Project reference VS NuGet

Project reference or NuGet is a very common problem in our development process, we need to choose which one to use based on our actual situation.

For example, if the referenced project A is modified frequently during the development process, we recommend to use Project reference. Because if you use nuget, you have to rebuild the referenced project, recreate the nuget package, reinstall that nuget package to the project B, even you have to publish it to the server. This will bring a lot of unnecessary work and we often forget to update our nuget package after we modify the referenced project A. If you use the project reference, you will not have these problems. The modified referenced project A will be update automatically before we build the project B.

On the other hand, when we share our referenced project A out of solution, or share that project to others, nuget will be a better choice. It has more portability.

So the project reference will be recommended when you reference to another project A from project B in the same solution, the nuget is more appropriate when share the reference project out of solution or share project to others.

Besides, there is a Visual Studio extension NuGet Reference Switcher, which which automatically switches NuGet assembly references to project references and vice-versa.

Hope this helps.