The NuGet manager in Visual Studio reloads when focus is regained

[tomkuijsten]

Tested on Visual Studio 2015 (latest bits) and 2017 (latest bits) on Windows 10 (with anniversary update).

When I open the NuGet manager (for solution or project) and select the consolidate tab, it takes a very long time to load. I don't really understand why, but that's not the real question here. The problem is that it reloads everytime I switch from a code file, to the NuGet manager. Really frustrating if you want to update some packages and in the meanwhile do some actual work.

Why is this update done when the focus is regained? There is a "refresh" button on the tab, if I really want to update, I'll use that one.

[nkolev92]

Since this issue was created, we've stopped reloading when on the browse tab, but not the installed and consolidate tabs.

fyi @donnie-msft
There probably are issues related to the described behavior.

[donnie-msft]

I think my other work to keep Installed/Updates packages in a cache could improve this by default.

There's still a background reload of metadata... which would be less aggressive. Could do that only after a certain time interval. But maybe even that's not necessary since we have a Refresh button .

[nkolev92]

Adding context from our chat during Friday's sync-up, [OneNote link](https://microsoft.sharepoint.com/teams/NuGet/_layouts/OneNote.aspx?id=%2Fteams%2FNuGet%2FTeam%2FNuGet&wd=target%28Engineering.one%7C219AABAA-18B3-46F4-83E8-D3188D83DE22%2FVisual%20Studio%20Package%20Manager%20UI%20-%20technical%20details%7C515D6CBB-07F6-413C-BDA1-9268AF9E3170%2F%29
onenote:https://microsoft.sharepoint.com/teams/NuGet/Team/NuGet/Engineering.one#Visual%20Studio%20Package%20Manager%20UI%20-%20technical%20details&section-id={219AABAA-18B3-46F4-83E8-D3188D83DE22}&page-id={515D6CBB-07F6-413C-BDA1-9268AF9E3170}&end)

Copying the content, without the links.

[mrtristan]

@donnie-msft not sure if related, let me know if i should open a new issue. tried searching which brought me here.

I find that package updates basically pause if focus is not kept with VS. from a workflow perspective i will usually hit update and then go do something else while i wait. for a while now i've found that as soon as i alt-tab away everything pauses. when i alt-tab back and click in the window the update progress will continue. it sounds like a "watched pot never boils" kind of thing but i've definitely confirmed it over and over again where it takes moments or minutes if i have it focused and will frequently never complete if i don't leave it at the front.

[donnie-msft]

@mrtristan please report a separate issue for that one... that's interesting and we definitely need to investigate there.

[loop-evgeny]

Is this fixed for the Updates tab in Visual Studio, then? If so, in which VS version?

[nkolev92]

@loop-evgeny 16.9.

I just verified it on my end by switching between a cs file and previously opened updates tab in the package manager UI.

[loop-evgeny]

Thank you, I updated to VS 16.9.3 and this specific issue is indeed fixed. However, when I switch between the NuGet package manager tabs (Installed, Updates, Consolidate) it still reloads every time, even though nothing has changed. I don't understand why it even needs to load anything for each tab separately - there is one list of installed packages, and once that's loaded, surely it's easy to work out which have updates and which have different versions between projects?