Ecosystem and Learning Resources
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This section documents MSBuild 18.9, the .NET SDK 10.0.402 (with its This content was generated with the assistance of AI and should be verified against the official documentation before being relied on in production. The C# Reference bibliography lists the reference material consulted while preparing these pages. |
This is the only page of the section about tools that are not part of MSBuild, the .NET SDK or NuGet. Each entry has a one-line description, its official site and documentation, and at most a one-line install command; none is documented further here. Three of them appear in one worked example each elsewhere, because the pages that use them need a concrete tool: MinVer and Nerdbank.GitVersioning on Versioning and Prerelease Packages, and BaGetter (the local feed server used throughout the publishing examples) on Private Feeds.
Selection criterion. A project is listed if it had a release in the 12 months before 2026-10-23, or is a Microsoft or dotnet-organisation project. Entries marked third-party are maintained outside Microsoft. Versions and dates were checked on 2026-10-23 against nuget.org, the projects' repositories and Docker Hub.
Build orchestration in C#
Scripts that drive dotnet commands with C# or F# code instead of shell or YAML. They do not replace MSBuild; they call it.
| Project | What it is | Links | Install |
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Cake (third-party) |
A cross-platform build automation system with a C# DSL; 6.3.0 (2026-09-14). |
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NUKE (third-party) |
A build system where the build is a C# console project with typed targets and CI generation; 10.1.0 (2025-12-02). |
nuke.build (site not re-verified from this environment), Nuke.Common on nuget.org |
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FAKE (third-party) |
"F# Make", a build automation system with an F# DSL; fake-cli 6.2.0 (2026-10-11). |
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Bullseye (third-party) |
A small .NET library for describing and running a target dependency graph from a console app; 6.3.0 (2026-10-05). |
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MSBuild SDKs and helpers
| Project | What it is | Links | Install |
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microsoft/MSBuildSdks (Microsoft) |
A collection of MSBuild project SDKs: Traversal (4.1.82) to build a tree of projects from one |
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MSBuild Structured Log Viewer (third-party) |
A viewer for MSBuild binary logs ( |
msbuildlog.com (download and instructions for Windows and Mac) |
download from the site |
Versioning
Tools that compute the package version from Git, so it is never edited by hand.
| Project | What it is | Links | Install |
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MinVer (third-party) |
Sets |
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Nerdbank.GitVersioning (dotnet organisation) |
Versions from a |
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GitVersion (third-party) |
Semantic versions from the branch model (GitFlow, GitHub Flow, trunk-based); 6.8.2 (2026-07-10). |
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Feeds and servers
Self-hosted servers and hosted services that speak the NuGet protocol. The hosted products are those listed on the NuGet documentation’s hosting overview, with their own NuGet documentation; AWS CodeArtifact, which the overview does not list, is included because it is a common choice.
| Project | What it is | Links | Install |
|---|---|---|---|
BaGetter (third-party) |
A lightweight, open-source NuGet and symbol server (a maintained fork of BaGet); 1.6.5 (2025-12-07). The local feed in this section’s publishing examples. |
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Sleet (third-party) |
A static NuGet feed generator for file shares, Azure Storage and Amazon S3, with no server process; 7.2.0 (2026-07-13). |
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ProGet (Inedo) |
A self-hosted package server for NuGet and other formats. |
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Sonatype Nexus Repository |
A repository manager with NuGet hosted, proxy and group repositories. |
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JFrog Artifactory |
A universal artifact repository with NuGet local, remote and virtual repositories. |
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Cloudsmith |
A hosted package management service with NuGet feeds. |
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Feedz.io |
A hosted NuGet and npm feed service. |
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MyGet |
A hosted package feed service (NuGet, npm and others). |
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GitLab Package Registry |
GitLab’s built-in NuGet registry per project or group. |
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AWS CodeArtifact |
Amazon’s managed artifact repository with NuGet support. |
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GitHub Packages and Azure Artifacts, the two hosted feeds the section documents in detail, are on Private Feeds.
Source: NuGet: Hosting your own NuGet feeds.
Package inspection and quality
| Project | What it is | Links | Install |
|---|---|---|---|
NuGet Package Explorer (third-party) |
A desktop app (and web viewer) to open a |
from the Microsoft Store or the repository’s releases |
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dotnet-validate (third-party) |
A tool that checks a package for the nuget.org quality signals (Source Link, deterministic build, symbols); still
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dotnet-outdated (third-party) |
Reports (and optionally upgrades) outdated package references; 4.8.1 (2026-06-11). |
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sign (dotnet organisation) |
Microsoft’s code-signing tool for packages and binaries with cloud-held keys (Azure Key Vault, Trusted Signing); still a
beta, 0.9.1-beta.26475.3 (2026-09-26). The |
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Upgrades
| Project | What it is | Links |
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.NET Upgrade Assistant (Microsoft) |
A Visual Studio extension and CLI tool that helps move .NET Framework projects to SDK-style projects and newer .NET versions; CLI 1.0.518 (2025-07-30). |
IDEs
All three build with MSBuild and the installed SDK (How a .NET Build Works).
| IDE | Build integration | Links |
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Visual Studio 2026 (Microsoft) |
Runs its own .NET Framework MSBuild (18.11 in 18.11.1) and a NuGet client that can be newer than the SDK’s (NuGet 7.10 shipped only in Visual Studio 18.10); Package Manager UI and Console; design-time builds for IntelliSense. |
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JetBrains Rider (third-party) |
Uses the installed .NET SDK’s MSBuild (or a chosen |
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VS Code with C# Dev Kit (Microsoft) |
Solution Explorer and test integration on top of the |