Powershell: How to install the Nuget provider for PowerShell on a unconnected machine so I can install a nuget package from the PS command line

You are reinventing the wheel. Normal PowerShell scripts have parameters starting with -, like script.ps1 -server http://devserver

Then you handle them in param section in the beginning of the file.

You can also assign default values to your params, read them from console if not available or stop script execution:

 param (
    [string]$server = "http://defaultserver",
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][string]$username,
    [string]$password = $( Read-Host "Input password, please" )
 )

Inside the script you can simply

write-output $server

since all parameters become variables available in script scope.

In this example, the $server gets a default value if the script is called without it, script stops if you omit the -username parameter and asks for terminal input if -password is omitted.

Update: You might also want to pass a "flag" (a boolean true/false parameter) to a PowerShell script. For instance, your script may accept a "force" where the script runs in a more careful mode when force is not used.

The keyword for that is [switch] parameter type:

 param (
    [string]$server = "http://defaultserver",
    [string]$password = $( Read-Host "Input password, please" ),
    [switch]$force = $false
 )

Inside the script then you would work with it like this:

if ($force) {
  //deletes a file or does something "bad"
}

Now, when calling the script you'd set the switch/flag parameter like this:

.\yourscript.ps1 -server "http://otherserver" -force

If you explicitly want to state that the flag is not set, there is a special syntax for that

.\yourscript.ps1 -server "http://otherserver" -force:$false

Links to relevant Microsoft documentation (for PowerShell 5.0; tho versions 3.0 and 4.0 are also available at the links):

• about_Scripts
• about_Functions
• about_Functions_Advanced_Parameters

You can use nuget.exe to restore your packages or with NuGet 2.7, or above, installed you can simply compile your solution in Visual Studio, which will also restore the missing packages.

For NuGet.exe you can run the following command for each project.

nuget install packages.config

Or with NuGet 2.7 you can restore all packages in the solution using the command line.

nuget restore YourSolution.sln

Both of these will pull down the packages. Your project files will not be modified however when running this command so the project should already have a reference to the NuGet packages. If this is not the case then you can use Visual Studio to install the packages.

With NuGet 2.7, and above, Visual Studio will automatically restore missing NuGet packages when you build your solution so there is no need to use NuGet.exe.

To update all the packages in your solution, first restore them, and then you can either use NuGet.exe to update the packages or from within Visual Studio you can update the packages from the Package Manager Console window, or finally you can use the Manage Packages dialog.

From the command line you can update packages in the solution to the latest version available from nuget.org.

nuget update YourSolution.sln

Note that this will not run any PowerShell scripts in any NuGet packages.

From within Visual Studio you can use the Package Manager Console to also update the packages. This has the benefit that any PowerShell scripts will be run as part of the update where as using NuGet.exe will not run them. The following command will update all packages in every project to the latest version available from nuget.org.

Update-Package

You can also restrict this down to one project.

Update-Package -Project YourProjectName

If you want to reinstall the packages to the same versions as were previously installed then you can use the -reinstall argument with Update-Package command.

Update-Package -reinstall

You can also restrict this down to one project.

Update-Package -reinstall -Project YourProjectName

The -reinstall option will first uninstall and then install the package back again into a project.

Or, you can update the packages using the Manage Packages dialog.

Updates:

• 2013/07/10 - Updated with information about nuget restore in NuGet 2.7
• 2014/07/06 - Updated with information about automatic package restore in Visual Studio and brought the answer up to date with other changes to NuGet.
• 2014/11/21 - Updated with information about -reinstall