NuGet/package restore not playing nicely with F# - f#

Question

We have a solution with an F# project and a C# project. Both consume the same set of NuGet packages, using NuGet package restore to automate the downloads. Frustratingly, we are constantly running into issues where the F# project cannot build, forcing us to uninstall and then reinstall all packages. It appears that NuGet is not properly editing the fsproj file during installation, thus leaving us with duplicate references, or misversioned references that block the build. Has anyone encountered a similar problem/does anyone know of a solution?

Answer 1

Are you running into this bug? F# Project VS 2012: Update package removes HintPath
There are some other known bugs in NuGet which affect F# projects. You may want to browse through the NuGet issue tracker on CodePlex to see if your problem has already been reported; if it hasn't, you should definitely file a bug report to make the NuGet developers aware of the problem.
NuGet Issue Tracker

Answer 2

I recently wrote a blog post about this issue and how to reproduce it.
http://mikehadlow.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/nuget-install-is-broken-with-f.html
I've copied in the start of it below as requested:
There’s a very nasty bug when you try and use NuGet to add a package reference to an F# project. It manifests itself when either the assembly that is being installed also has a version in the GAC or a different version already exists in the output directory.
First let’s reproduce the problem when a version of the assembly already exists in the GAC.
Create a new solution with an F# project.
Choose an assembly that you want to install from NuGet that also exists in the GAC on your machine. For ironic purposes I’m going to choose NuGet.Core for this example.
It’s in my GAC:
D:\>gacutil -l | find "NuGet.Core"
NuGet.Core, Version=1.0.11220.104, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35, processorArchitecture=MSIL
NuGet.Core, Version=1.6.30117.9648, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35, processorArchitecture=MSIL
You can see that the highest version in the GAC is version 1.6.30117.9648
Now let’s install NuGet.Core version 2.5.0 from the official NuGet source:
PM> Install-Package NuGet.Core -Version 2.5.0
Installing 'Nuget.Core 2.5.0'.
Successfully installed 'Nuget.Core 2.5.0'.
Adding 'Nuget.Core 2.5.0' to Mike.NuGetExperiments.FsProject.
Successfully added 'Nuget.Core 2.5.0' to Mike.NuGetExperiments.FsProject.
It correctly creates a packages directory, downloads the NuGet.Core package and creates a packages.config file:
D:\Source\Mike.NuGetExperiments\src>tree /F
D:.
│ Mike.NuGetExperiments.sln
│
├───Mike.NuGetExperiments.FsProject
│ │ Mike.NuGetExperiments.FsProject.fsproj
│ │ packages.config
│ │ Spike.fs
│ │
│ ├───bin
│ │ └───Debug
│ │
│ └───obj
│ └───Debug
│
└───packages
│ repositories.config
│
└───Nuget.Core.2.5.0
│ Nuget.Core.2.5.0.nupkg
│ Nuget.Core.2.5.0.nuspec
│
└───lib
└───net40-Client
NuGet.Core.dll
But when when I look at my fsproj file I see that it has incorrectly referenced the NuGet.Core version (1.6.30117.9648) from the GAC and there is no hint path pointing to the downloaded package.
<Reference Include="NuGet.Core, Version=1.6.30117.9648, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35">
<Private>True</Private>
</Reference>