paket simplify

Simplify declared dependencies by removing transitive dependencies.

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paket simplify [--help] [--interactive]

OPTIONS:

    --interactive, -i     confirm deletion of every transitive dependency
    --silent, -s          suppress console output
    --verbose, -v         print detailed information to the console
    --log-file <path>     print output to a file
    --help                display this list of options.

If you add the --verbose flag Paket will run in verbose mode and show detailed information.

With --log-file [path] you can trace the logged information into a file.

A note on `strict` mode

paket simplify will also affect paket.references files, unless strict mode is used.

Important: paket simplify is a heuristic approach to dependency simplification. It often works very well, but there are rare cases where simplify can result in changes of the package resolution.

Interactive mode

Sometimes, you may still want to have control over some of the transitive dependencies. In this case you can use the --interactive flag, which will ask you to confirm before deleting a dependency from a file.

Preventing Simplify

You can use the setting simplify: never to prevent a package from being removed as part of the simplify. Any package with settings will also never be removed.

Example

When you install Castle.Windsor package in NuGet to a project, it will generate a following packages.config file in the project location:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<packages>
  <package id="Castle.Core" version="3.3.1" targetFramework="net451" />
  <package id="Castle.Windsor" version="3.3.0" targetFramework="net451" />
</packages>

After converting to Paket with paket convert-from-nuget, you should get a following paket.dependencies file:

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source https://nuget.org/api/v2

nuget Castle.Core 3.3.1
nuget Castle.Windsor 3.3.0

The NuGet packages.config should be converted to following paket.references file:

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Castle.Core
Castle.Windsor

As you have already probably guessed, the Castle.Windsor package happens to have a dependency on the Castle.Core package. Paket will by default (without strict mode) add references to all required dependencies of a package that you define for a specific project in paket.references file. In other words, you still get the same result if you remove Castle.Core from your paket.references file.

This is exactly what happens after executing paket simplify command. After running it, paket.dependencies will contain:

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source https://nuget.org/api/v2

nuget Castle.Windsor 3.3.0

And paket.references file contains:

1:	`Castle.Windsor`

Unless you are relying heavily on types from Castle.Core, you would not care about controlling the required version of Castle.Core package. Paket will do the job.

The simplify command will help you maintain your direct dependencies.

Paket

paket simplify

A note on strict mode

Interactive mode

Preventing Simplify

Example

A note on `strict` mode