Self-contained NuGet Packages - Icons should be embedded in Packages

[johnataylor]

Package Icon should be able to come form inside the package.
It should be possible to put a path in the iconUrl that is relative to the package.

[veleek]

Note: Transferred from issue on CodePlex - Packages containing Icon and License

Packages containing Icon and License

Problem Statement

Currently, the NuGet schema only allows the package author to specify the LicenseUrl and IconUrl as external URLs for the license and icon respectively. This puts the burden on the developer to find a place to host those files and update the NuSpec with their locations.

Solution

The NuGet Gallery should support unpacking a license and icon within the package folder both explicitly specified and by convention.

Details

Convention Based Approach

The convention based approach is very simple.

File	Description
Icon.png	An Icon.png at the root of the package will be unpacked and used as the icon for the package
License.txt	A license.txt file at the root of the package will be used as the license

Explicit Reference

Alternatively, we can support explicit references using the file:// prefixed URLs relative to the package root. For example:

<iconUrl>file://content/images/nugetIcon.png</iconUrl>

This grabs the file from the content/images folder of the package and hosts it on the server. This is useful in cases where the icon is also hosted.

Device Specific Icon Images

There a multiple places where icons are displayed.

• NuGet Dialog (32x32)
• NuGet.org packages list (50x50)
• NuGet.org package details page (100x100)

We should consider a convention that allows developers to include an icon specific to each of these devices.

Proposal

Use a file extension for each.

• Icon_dialog.png (32x32)
• Icon_list.png (50x50)
• Icon_details.png (100x100)

[csharpfritz]

We see some customers unable to view icons as the web location of the icon image is blocked by their corporate firewall. Possible solution could be to download and serve the images from NuGet.org as a resource at the same URI as the package when an image media type is requested

[maartenba]

-> NuGet/NuGetGallery#2613

[xavierdecoster]

To support an embedded package icon in the nupkg, it seems we only need the 32x32 icon. All other images are only served on the gallery and don't need to be in the package.

As this issue is about supporting an embedded icon in the package, it sounds to me that a convention-based icon.png in the package root could be sufficient?
IconUrl is an optional nuspec element, so not sure if we should make it required to support an embedded icon.
Perhaps we should simply fallback from IconUrl to icon.png (if present) to default nuget icon?

[maartenba]

That's an entirely different discussion. All we need is package icon proxying over www.nuget.org.

[xavierdecoster]

Nope, your discussion is here: NuGet/NuGetGallery#2613
Related,
but not the topic of this client issue 😊
So, on topic, how about this client issue?

[yishaigalatzer]

Proposal

Use a file extension for each.

Icon_dialog.png (32x32)
Icon_list.png (50x50)
Icon_details.png (100x100)

We should specify the size in the icon name instead

icon32x32.png
icon50x50.png
icon100x100.png

We need to discuss if we require all of them, can they be updated later etc.

[Allann]

I'd prefer to see the scale convention used by win8 manifests used here too. this would mean that brand images can be re-used and we don't need to create even more files named differently.