How can I parse PackageReference from many ItemGroup?

[6a6f6a6f]

I'm using Microsoft.Build on version 17.1.0 as a library inside a .NET 6 simple application. My main goal is to have the attributes of PackageReference (Include and Version) starting at ProjectRootElement.Open(path), but when I loop thou the ItemGroups, I'm not able to find any other attribute than Version:

project.ItemGroups
    .SelectMany(rootElement => rootElement.Items)
    .Where(itemElement => itemElement.ElementName == "PackageReference")
    .ToList()
    .ForEach(item =>
    {
        var metadata = item.Metadata.ToList();
        metadata.ForEach(d =>
        {
            Console.WriteLine($"{d.Name}: {d.Value}");
        });
    });

If these questions do not fit here, please bring me some direction.

Many thanks for considering my request.

Information about my runtime:

• .NET SDK: 6.0.201 (commit ef40e6aa06);
• OS Name: Mac OS X;
• OS Version: 12.2;
• OS Platform: Darwin;
• RID: osx.12-arm64.

[rainersigwald]

Are you wanting to do this as XML, or as MSBuild objects? The latter is preferred, but requires you to think more about the actual item type. Specifically, the Include is expressed in XML as an attribute, but becomes something more fundamental to the MSBuild type--it's not metadata because it's special and it's available in ProjectItemElement.Include. Exclude and Remove are also special.

What specific problem are you trying to solve? There may be a better way to go about it.

[6a6f6a6f]

Thank you for moving to the right place @rainersigwald. The problem I'm trying to solve is to extract all references and dependencies of a project, including the version.

[rainersigwald]

In that case, you should think about evaluating the project using Microsoft.Build.Evaluation.Project.GetItems rather than using the Microsoft.Build.Construction API. That's because the Construction API looks only at the project file, but a user might define references in an imported file or use something like Central Package Versioning to apply versions in a place other than "directly in the project file".