Checking For Outdated Nuget Packages In C# & .NET

Adding a Nuget package to a .NET project is a straightforward affair.

You’d typically do it via the command like this:

nuget add package Dapper

Your favourite IDE offers the same using some sort of UI.

JetBrains Rider looks like this:

Visual Studio looks like this:

LINQPad looks like this:

The challenge arises when these packages are updated.

How do you know about it?

There are a number of ways:

Native .NET Tool

The first way is to use the built-in .NET tool and run the following command in the project folder:

dotnet list package --outdated

This will print something like this:

Build succeeded in 0.5s

The following sources were used:
   https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json
   /Users/rad/WindowsShare
   /Users/rad/Projects/Nuget

Project `Innova.SelfService.DummyApi` has the following updates to its packages
   [net9.0]: 
   Top-level Package                            Requested   Resolved   Latest                  
   > IdentityServer4.AccessTokenValidation      3.0.1       3.0.1      Not found at the sources
   > Microsoft.Data.SqlClient                   6.1.2       6.1.2      6.1.3                   
   > Serilog.AspNetCore                         9.0.0       9.0.0      10.0.0                  
   > Swashbuckle.AspNetCore                     9.0.6       9.0.6      10.0.1     

The challenge with this method is that it will tell you what is outdated, but it doesn’t offer any way to update. You have to do that yourself - either by re-running the dotnet add package command or manually editing the .csproj to amend the version number.

.NET Outdated Tool

The better way is to use the .NET outdated tool.

You install it like so:

dotnet tool install --global dotnet-outdated-tool

Or update it to the latest version like so:

dotnet tool update --global dotnet-outdated-tool

You then run it like so to see the outdated packages:

dotnet outdated

It will produce output like this:

Discovering projects...
Analyzing project(s)...
Analyzing dependencies...
» Innova.SelfService.DummyApi
  [net9.0]
  Microsoft.Data.SqlClient  6.1.2 -> 6.1.3 
  Serilog.AspNetCore        9.0.0 -> 10.0.0
  Swashbuckle.AspNetCore    9.0.6 -> 10.0.1

Version color legend:
<red>   : Major version update or pre-release version. Possible breaking changes.
<yellow>: Minor version update. Backwards-compatible features added.
<green> : Patch version update. Backwards-compatible bug fixes.

This tool has the additional benefit that it can also upgrade the packages.

dotnet oudated -u

This will produce output like this:

IDE Update

Your IDE can also allow you to see and upgrade outdated packages.

JetBrains Rider, for instance, would look like this:

You do, however, have to update the packages one by one, unlike the dotnet outdated tool that can upgrade them all at once.

TLDR

There are various ways to update your project’s nuget packages. The simplest is the dotnet outdated tool