Want to announce that ServiceStack’s build system has been overhauled to now utilize MSBuild generated NuGet packages where now all packages include embedded pdb symbols and support for SourceLink which should improve the debugging experience of ServiceStack Apps as source files can be downloaded on-the-fly from GitHub as you debug.
Scott Hanselman has written a nice post about Source Link and how it can be enabled inside VS.NET by turning on Enable source link support:
With that enabled it should let you debug into ServiceStack implementation, downloading the correct source files version from GitHub as it needs them. This change is now available from the latest v5.4.1 pre-release packages on MyGet.
All ServiceStack GitHub projects now use CI NuGet feed
This is only relevant if you build the ServiceStack libraries on GitHub yourself:
The other major change was that we’ve switched all ServiceStack library GitHub projects to use CI NuGet packages instead of embedding external dependency .dll’s each project needed in /lib which was only kept in-sync with the latest .dll’s that was checked before each release. The /lib folder has been removed with all external dependencies now being referenced through NuGet packages hosted on our CI Server, this change should now let you build the master repo of all GitHub projects from a clean checkout at anytime. The packages still use the same pre-release v5.4.1 version on MyGet so if you get a build error you’ll need to clear your local packages cache to download the latest build packages from the NuGet feed.
MSBuild generated packages
Previously all ServiceStack NuGet packages were built using a custom .nuspec for each package, they’re now all generated from MSBuild so there will be some changes in the metadata of each package which in theory should have less issues as MSBuild knows more about each project and can generate more accurate version and metadata information, but at the same time it is a change from manually maintained .nuspec we were using so please let me know if you have any issues with the latest v5.4.1 packages on MyGet.