I have a project which has a NuGet package called MSBuildTasks installed. It installs two files: MSBuild.Community.Tasks.targets and MSBuild.Community.Tasks.dll to the .build directory within the solution directory. This package reference has been added to the packages.config file in that project directory so that when I build the project (and with the NuGet package restore settings enabled) it will restore the package which is great because then I can distribute the source to other developers and build it on our build server without any missing files...
However, the problem is that when NuGet restores the package, it doesn't restore these two files to the expected location it was originally in when I first installed it with the Install-Package MSBuildTasks command, which was in to the $(SolutionDir)\.build directory. Instead, it has installed it to the $(SolutionDir)\packages\MSBuildTasks.1.4.0.78\tools directory, so now if I wish to include the MSBuild.Community.Tasks.targets file, I must reference this path absolutely in my .csproj or other .targets file. This presents a problem since the version number will undoubtedly change, requiring manual work to correct.
Is there some way that I can restore the MSBuildTasks .targets and .dll files to the original location of $(SolutionDir)\.build where it first installs to? The current behaviour of restoring in to the packages directory, while it makes sense for other packages, seems like a bug for this particular package since I will not be able to know the version number of the directory to include in my other .targets or .csproj files.
NuGet restore will only download files to the packages directory. It will not make any other modifications.
Looking at the MSBuildTasks NuGet package the files added to the $(SolutionDir)\.build are added by a PowerShell script. This PowerShell script will not be run when restoring the NuGet package.
You should add the $(SolutionDir)\.build to your source control repository.