Are the msbuild sdk nuget package dependencies necessary

[ViktorHofer]

While looking at the latest available Traversal package on nuget.org, I noticed that the package contains empty dependency groups for net40 and netstandard2.0. While this is just for cosmetics, I wonder if we want to omit them instead by setting <SuppressDependenciesWhenPacking>true</SuppressDependenciesWhenPacking> in the project files.

Happy to submit a PR.

[jeffkl]

Technically it doesn't matter since Microsoft.Build.Traversal is a NuGet-based MSBuild Project SDK and during "restore" of this kind of package, NuGet does not respect dependencies or target framework compatibility. I'm pretty sure you can't add a <PackageReference /> to that kind of package either.

But if you want to submit a PR, I'll gladly accept it 😄

[ViktorHofer]

Technically it doesn't matter since Microsoft.Build.Traversal is a NuGet-based MSBuild Project SDK and during "restore" of this kind of package, NuGet does not respect dependencies or target framework compatibility.

While NuGet doesn't respect it, we do have some tools that inspect packages and their dependencies, i.e. ApiCompat, or SBRP. I will submit a PR to suppress the dependencies.