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Custom Plugins is a very popular feature within Connexion. In Connection v15 we have added some smarts to allow development teams to support for auto-generate Custom Plugins generating Custom Plugin .nuget packages using standard build tools. This article describes the layout and requirements . With this you will be able to:

1. Package multiple plugins into a single package
2. Use msbuild/nuget.exe can be used to generate the nuget package in a standard build process. For example, running the following command will generate the nuget package shown below.
   nuget.exe pack Nuget\Connexion.SampleDevice.nuspec -nopackageanalysis -Version 1.0.0 -OutputDirectory Nuget
3. Use Visual Studio to automatically determine the necessary dependencies for a Plugin. Harvesting the files from the bin/Release directory will ensure that all device dependencies are include in the device package.
4. Place larger shared assemblies into a well-know location so that overall size of the .nuget package

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1. to be

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1. distributed is reduced.

There is plenty of information on the web that describes the .nuget package structure and how to use the .nuget package creation tools see:

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so we will not cover those here.  Rather, we will look at the specifics of building a .nuget package that contains 1 or more Custom Plugins.

A nuget package is essentially a zip file container with some meta information describing its contentsthe contents of the file. The full description of nuget can be found here. Connexion uses a very minimal set of the .nuget package capabilities. In fact, it only uses the metadata metadata section  section and Assembly Files section. Connexion does not use any of the dependency information, framework version, or any of the other features .nuget provides as they are mostly not applicable to Connexion.

An example nuget package for a set of Custom Plugins is shown above. It contains 2 sections: the "<metadata>" section which provides general version and descriptive information for the package; and the "<files>" section which contains directions to the nuget packaging tool where to place the assembly files during the build process.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<package  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/packaging/2013/05/nuspec.xsd">
  <metadata>    
    <id>Connexion.SampleDevice</id>
    <version>$version$</version>
    <authors>Nick, Jon</authors>
    <licenseUrl>http://hl7spy.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Eula.pdf</licenseUrl>
    <projectUrl>https://conevity.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CON/pages/14057474/Releases</projectUrl>
    <iconUrl>http://www.hl7spy.com/downloads/logo.png </iconUrl>
    <requireLicenseAcceptance>false</requireLicenseAcceptance>
    <description>This is a sample of how to build a Connexion Device</description>
    <releaseNotes></releaseNotes>
    <copyright>Copyright 2019 Conevity Solutions Inc.</copyright>
    <tags>Connexion Device</tags>
    <summary></summary>
  </metadata>
  <files>
    <!-- Add assemblies from each Plugin separately at the end of the build-->
    <file src="..\..\SampleDevice1Plugin1\bin\$Configuration$\*.dll" target="Assemblies\SampleDevice1Plugin1" />
    <file src="..\..\SampleDevice2Plugin2\bin\$Configuration$\*.dll" target="Assemblies\SampleDevice2Plugin2" />
    <file src="..\..\SampleDevice3Plugin3\bin\$Configuration$\*.dll" target="Assemblies\SampleDevice3Plugin3" />
    <file src="..\..\SampleDevice4Plugin4\bin\$Configuration$\*.dll" target="Assemblies\SampleDevice4Plugin4" />
    <!-- Add large assemblies that should be associated with every Plugin-->
    <file src="..\..\library\*.dll" target="Assemblies\Shared" />
  </files>
</package>

I have attached a sample .nuspec that will create a nuget package with multiple devices. The pertinent section of the nuget package is the <files> section.

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This demonstrates creating a structure within the nuget package that would place each plugin and all its dependent assemblies into its own folder. Here is why I think this would be a good approach.

1. Supports packaging multiple plugins into a single package
2. msbuild/nuget.exe can be used to generate the nuget package in a standard build process. For example, running the following command will generate the nuget package.
   nuget.exe pack Nuget\Connexion.SampleDevice.nuspec -nopackageanalysis -Version 1.0.0 -OutputDirectory Nuget
3. Visual Studio has become very good at determining and pulling in the necessary dependencies for a project. Harvesting the files from the bin/Release directory will ensure that all device dependencies are include in the device package.

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