PackageReference for NuGet packages in C++ projects

Question

I'm part of a project where we use packages.config files for NuGet packages in Visual Studioe and then include each package dependency through the Import statement in our project files.

This works fine if you always want the packages, but we have some conditional packages that we'd like to exclude if the developer doesn't need/want it. I found the PackageReference tag, that would make the dependency much cleaner and would let us include the packages conditionally.

It seems to be fully supported in C# projects, but I can't figure out if it's supported for C++ projects or not.

I have tried deleting all of our packages.config files and replacing all references with PackageReference tags, but the PackageReference tag doesn't seem to be picked up by the package manager. I've gone through all the "migration tools" that I could find for Visual Studio too, with no luck.

Is it possible to use it for C++ projects? If not, is there a workaround that lets me exclude certain packages conditionally?

I'm using Visual Studio Professional 15.6.7.

Answer 1

While not supported, it IS possible to use PackageReference with C++ projects.

If you check the comments at https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/use-packagereference-in-vcxproj/351636, there are a couple examples on how to enable this.

Note, the Visual Studio experience may degrade, but building with MSBuild (command line) has had no issues.