Azure Dev Ops, Private Nuget feed, options to develop / test nuget packages?

Question

I am looking for practical options to develop and test private nuget packages.

We have a set of "core" code that is delivered securely through an Azure Artifact Feed. We have various "consuming" applications that use the core nuget packages.

As a small-medium team, one person may be developing the core nuget as well as consuming it.

Today we check-in / merge the code for the nuget package. Make sure the Pull request is approved / passes. Then the build updates the Azure Artifact feed.

Then we come back to the "consuming" app and can update the package. Works great if you fix / add the feature the first time. However, slows down productivity when treating this as an iterative development approach.

Looking for simple options for a small team. Random thoughts on options:

1. Push nuget "alpha" package straight from developer's machine to Azure Artifact feed. Symbol server too?

2. Do something with an Azure build to allow "feature" branches to publish to Azure Artifact feed somehow?

3. Push to local nuget feed. Include pdbs so it can be debugged?

4. Temporarily break the nuget reference directly for local copy of dll(s)?

5. Re-think using nuget packages as a whole?

Answer 1

Push nuget "alpha" package straight from developer's machine to Azure Artifact feed. Symbol server too?

It depends on whether you need to debug it. If you need do debug this "alpha" package, you have to push the symbol package to the symbol server.

Note: You do not need to push the "alpha" package to the symbol server, just the symbol package.

Do something with an Azure build to allow "feature" branches to publish to Azure Artifact feed somehow?

There is a task Push NuGet packages, we could use it to publish to Azure Artifact feed during build, no matter which branch it is on. It depends on whether you have enough permissions for the Azure Artifact feed, you can check it from Artifacts->Settings->Feed settings->Permissions:

Push to local nuget feed. Include pdbs so it can be debugged?

No, you also have to include the source code. Check this thread for some more details.

And there is a lightweight solution how to debugged nuget package on local feed on a network share.

Temporarily break the nuget reference directly for local copy of dll(s)?

Re-think using nuget packages as a whole?

The answer is yes, when we develop the project on the local, use project reference is better than nuget, check my another post for some more details:

Ticket: Project reference VS NuGet.

Hope this helps.