PackagesODataController removes filter when searching while specifying targetFramework

[romerod]

VS2017 package manager sends the following query to a nuget repository:

Search()?$filter=IsLatestVersion&searchTerm=%27%27&targetFramework=%27net462%27&includePrerelease=false&$skip=0&$top=26

In the following code in the PackagesODataController removes the filter which results in an almost empty result list.

if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(targetFramework))
            {
                targetFrameworks = targetFramework.Split(new[] { '|' }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries).Distinct();
                options = RemoveFilter(options);
            }

Is there any reason for this?

[chriseldredge]

Yes, there's a reason. The filter that is being stripped is attempting to select only the latest version of a package, but when a specific target framework version is included in the query criteria, this can produce an empty result.

Consider the case of a package that released version 1.0, which supported .net 3.5. Then, two years later they dropped support for .net 3.5 and only support .net 4.5.

If a client searches for packages compatible with .net 3.5, they'd want to see version 1.0 of that package. The "latest version" criteria would prevent that from happening.

[jweber]

We're seeing this same problem. When the filter is removed it causes all versions of the each package to be returned by the Search endpoint in the controller.

In our case browsing the NuGet repository in Visual Studio results in only one package being displayed. This is since Visual Studio is only asking for the first 26 results. The first 26 results from the PackagesODataController returned 26 different versions of the same package.

[chriseldredge]

This is a frustrating problem. These additional checks were added to work around a previous version of the NuGet addon for Visual Studio, and now it sounds like the behavior has changed once again.