How can you find unused NuGet packages in solution?
How can you find the unused NuGet packages in a solution?
I've got a number of solutions where there are a lot of installed packages, and a large number of them are flagged as having updates.
However, I'm concerned there may be breaking changes, so I first want to clean up by removing any unused packages.
Solution 1:
ReSharper 2016.1 has a feature to remove unused NuGet.
It can be run on a solution and on each project in a solution and it does the following things:
- Analyze your code and collecting references to assemblies.
- Build NuGet usage graph based on usages of assemblies.
- Packages without content files, unused itself and without used dependencies are assumed as unused and suggested to remove.
Unfortunately, this doesn't work for project.json projects (RSRP-454515) and ASP.NET core projects (RSRP-459076)
Solution 2:
You can use the Visual Studio Extension ResolveUR - Resolve Unused References.
Resolve unused references including nuget references in Visual Studio 2012/2013/2015 projects via menu item at solution and project nodes Solution Explorer Tool Window
It's not an easy task, so I suggest to make a backup and/or commit before, just in order to rollback if something went wrong.
Solution 3:
You can accomplish this using ReSharper 2019.1.1.
Right click on the project > Refactor > Remove Unused References.
If your project is small, you can also use: project > Optimize Used References . . .
A window will pop up. Select all references and remove them all. Then go back and re-add the ones that give you a compiler error.