Paket.Restore.targets created by paket.exe differs from GitHub release

[seniorquico]

Description

I manually downloaded the most up-to-date versions of the paket.bootstrapper.exe and Paket.Restore.targets files (namely, 5.215.0). After running restore, the Paket.Restore.targets file is changed to a different version than the one just downloaded.

Repro steps

1. Download the latest versions of the paket.bootstrapper.exe and Paket.Restore.targets files.
2. Copy the files to the .paket folder of the project.
3. Rename paket.bootstrapper.exe to paket.exe.
4. In a command prompt, change into the project directory.
5. Run .paket\paket.exe restore.

Expected behavior

I'd expect the Paket.Restore.targets file to be unchaged from the downloaded version. Either the version posted to the GitHub release is incorrect or the version embedded within Paket is incorrect.

[github-actions]

🤖 This is an automated response from Repo Assist.

I investigated this. The behavior is by design: paket.exe restore always extracts its own embedded copy of Paket.Restore.targets (embedded as a resource in the assembly, see extractElement/extractRestoreTargets in RestoreProcess.fs) and overwrites whatever file is on disk in .paket/, unless the environment variable PAKET_SKIP_RESTORE_TARGETS=true is set.

So any manually-downloaded Paket.Restore.targets from a GitHub release will be replaced by the version baked into the specific paket.exe binary you're running the first time restore executes — this is intentional, since the targets file and the bootstrapper/exe version are meant to travel together as a matched pair (mismatches between them can cause subtle restore bugs). If you need to pin a custom Paket.Restore.targets, the supported way is to set PAKET_SKIP_RESTORE_TARGETS=true before running restore.

Given this is expected behavior with a documented escape hatch, I'd recommend closing this issue unless there's a specific concrete case where the embedded and released versions diverge for the same Paket version (which would indicate a packaging bug rather than this by-design overwrite).

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