NuGet exited with code -1073741502 - .Net Build Failing - asp.net

Question

I'm getting the error.
The command:
"C:\ProjectDir\.nuget\NuGet.exe" install "packages.config"
-source "https://www.nuget.org/api/v2/"
-NonInteractive
-RequireConsent
-solutionDir "C:\ProjectDir\ "
exited with code
-1073741502 while building one of my Class Library projects in my solution.
As a result, I'm getting many
Metadata file 'C:\ProjectDir\src\ProjectName\bin\ProjectName.dll' could not be found`
errors from other projects in my solution.
When I click on restore packages for the solution it shows that there are no packages to restore.
Any idea about the fix?

Answer 1

While it's interesting to know that NuGet exited with an error code, it's far more interesting and useful to know what the program's output is. By not sharing that with us, we have to do a lot of guessing, reducing the chance that you get an answer that helps your specific case.
Anyway, NuGet.exe's program returns 1 for almsot all error codes (unless something throws an ExitCodeException, but it appears that only signing related code returns anything other than 1). Therefore, I conclude that NuGet didn't actually run. My best guess is that you ran on a machine without recent versions of the .NET Framework installed, but you're running a newish version of nuget.exe that needs a newer .NET Framework.
You also didn't say what version of nuget.exe you're using. NuGet 5.x is designed for Visual Studio 2019, which has a minimum requirement of the .NET Framework 4.7.2. NuGet 4.x is designed for Visual Studio 2017, which has a requirement of .NET Framwork 4.6. However, Wikipedia says that the .NET Framework was released in April 2018, which suggests to me that if you don't have that installed, you're not running Windows Update and so you're probably vulnerable to all sorts of malware. Perhaps you've just turned off recommended updates and getting only the critical updates, but it's worth checking.
So, while I expect this to be the cause of the problem, I also want to comment that it's normal to run nuget restore, not nuget install, to restore packages for projects and solutions. Also, it's typical to simply run nuget restore mysolution.sln. This has several benefits. NuGet can restore the entire solution more efficiently than one project at a time. Secondly you no longer need to provide the -SolutionDir argument.
One possibility about why you're restoring one project at a time is hinted by the fact that you're running some_path\.nuget\nuget.exe. This was done in Visual Studio 2010, VS2012 and VS2013, but was removed from VS2015 onwards. Back then it was enabled by right clicking the project and selecting "Enable NuGet restore for solution" or something like that. This was because NuGet was not really integrated with Visual Studio back then, other than adding this command which would modify all your .NET project files and create the .nuget/ directory with 3 files. Since then NuGet is integrated with Visual Studio and can do automatic restores without hacking project files, so it's no longer needed. NuGet has docs on migrating to automatic package restore.
The only advantage of the old package restore that changes the .NET project files is that on a CI machine there's nothing extra to do. Simple clone the repo and run msbuild. Once it's removed, it's necessary to run nuget restore on the solution file before building, to restore packages.config projects. If you can migrate to PackageReference (needs Visual Studio 2017 or later), then the NuGet restore step isn't necessary, you can run msbuild /restore mysoltuion.sln, or if all projects in the solution are SDK style, just dotnet build. Although some people still prefer to separate restore and build into separate steps, so when there's a failure, it's more obvious if it was a restore or compile error.