Show NuGet package release notes

17
votes

The nuspec reference says about the releaseNotes tag

v1.5 A description of the changes made in each release of the package. This field only shows up when the Updates tab is selected and the package is an update to a previously installed package. It is displayed where the Description would normally be displayed.

I created two nuspec files, both containing (with different version tags of course)

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<package >
  <metadata>
    <id>TestReleaseNotes</id>
    <version>1.0</version>
    <authors>adrianm</authors>
    <requireLicenseAcceptance>false</requireLicenseAcceptance>
    <description>Description</description>
    <releaseNotes>Release notes</releaseNotes>
  </metadata>
  <files>
    <file src="Test.cs" target="content" />
  </files>
</package>

I installed 1.0 in VS2013 and selected the update tab but I can't see the release notes. Nuget update

What am I missing?

3
visual-studio-2013nugetnuspec
Seems OK for me with VS 2013 and an old version of Microsoft.ApplicationInsights installed the NuGet dialog shows a separate Release Notes label with the release note text from the NuGet package. - Matt Ward

3 Answers

13
votes

Found this out myself.

The release notes are displayed if I open the "Manage NuGet packages" dialog from the project. manage from project
but not when I open it from the solution.

The behaviour is the same for my own packages as well as nuget.org

3
votes

This still seems to be an issue in Visual Studio 2019 as at March 2021. We publish a number of nuget packages internally using Azure. The Package Release Notes show up in the Azure UI but not in Visual Studio. However, the "Description" does show up in Visual Studio, so I've tweaked the Description to include the release notes. This is actually from the Directory.build.props file, but could equally well be embedded in the project file:

        <PackageReleaseNotes>
Release notes added to .nuspec file as <Release Notes> and also to end of Description
        </PackageReleaseNotes>
        <!-- Don't indent text, it makes it hard to read in the nuget package manager-->
        <Description>
Description:
This is the description of our internally produced nuget package

Release Notes:$(PackageReleaseNotes)
        </Description>
2
votes

This issue is tracked in the NuGet repo regarding VS2015.

https://github.com/NuGet/Home/issues/1823