Search using tags

[Rob Taylor]

I'm evaluating ProGet and would like to confirm whether the behaviour I'm seeing when searching for packages in the UI is producing expected results.

I have two versions of the same NuGet package which have been tagged with different release numbers;

• my_package 1.0.0 {tags: release_a}
• my_package 1.0.1 {tags: release_b}

If I enter release_b in the search field then my_package 1.0.1 is displayed in the search results.

If I enter release_a in the search field then no results are returned.

Executing an odata query against the feed using the release_a tag returns metadata for version 1.0.0 of the package.
http://{proget-server}/nuget/{feed}/Packages()?$filter=substringof('release_a',Tags)

I was hoping that a search using tags would return all packages/versions that had the tag applied. If this not supported/planned, can you suggest an alternative way for searching forl packages that have a particular tag applied?

Product: ProGet
Version: 3.8.6

[Alana]

Hi Rob, both the search box in the web app, and the search box in the VS NuGet client will only search the latest version of packages by design.... otherwise, outdated packages would come up in results :)

It sounds like you're trying to use Tags like you might in a version control system? I definitely suggest a different approach for whatever you're trying to do. Tags were never designed for this use case, and you're just going to have a lot of frustrations trying to make them work in this manner.

[Rob Taylor]

Hi Alana, if I use VS Package Manager I can use tags in this way to identify packages that have a specific tag.

Get-Package -ListAvailable -AllVersions -Filter 'release_a'

I was hoping that by viewing tags within a package, it would tell me specific things that would be useful to know (like which release it was part of), without having to rely on a 3rd party configuration management system.

I guess I'm just confused as to why tags appear to become meaningless once a newer version of a package is present in the feed. To me this metadata is as important as the release notes/dependencies that ProGet shows me when I view information about older packages.

[Alana]

It's not that "tags appear to become meaningless once a newer version of a package is present", it's just that tags are part of an individual package's metadata (see the NuSpec Reference) just like name, description, authors, etc.

The VS Client, nuget.org, and every other package manager UI we've worked with will only do metadata search on the most current version of a package by default; otherwise, outdated and irrelevant packages would come up in results.

As you can see, it's possible to use an API to search for these things... but tags are simply not intended to solve the problem I think you're trying to solve.