41andrew
❔ Best way to handle external dependencies (.exe files, etc.)
Hi, I have a pretty large project and in order to build it I need some external dependencies (e.g. an executable file that can be downloaded from the internet).
Right now, every build agent/developer machine needs to manually install it in the correct path, which is a bit tedious.
I thought of 2 ways to solve this problem:
1. Package these exe files in a nuget package and store it on my local nuget feed. Then I can just reference this nuget package, so e.g. when setting up a new build machine, I wouldn't need to install anything manually, it would just fetch all the dependencies from nuget.
2. Store these files directly in the repository. Now this solution is not ideal, because these executables are pretty large for a git repo (but not overly large, sub 500Mbs), but then again there would be no need for additional setup when pulling repo - everything would be already there.
Is one solution better than the other? Or maybe there's a better one.
7 replies