.NET NuGet package restore failure

April 30, 2026 · View on GitHub

Playbook ID: dotnet-restore Category: build Severity: high Tags: dotnet, nuget, restore, csharp, build

What this failure means

dotnet restore or a build that implicitly runs restore could not download or resolve one or more NuGet packages. The build cannot proceed until all dependencies are available.

Common log signals

error NU
Package restore failed
NuGet restore
unable to find package
MSBuild error
Could not resolve SDK
NETStandard

Diagnosis

dotnet restore or a build that implicitly runs restore could not download or resolve one or more NuGet packages. The build cannot proceed until all dependencies are available.

Fix steps

  1. Add feed credentials to NuGet.Config or as CI secrets for private feeds.
  2. Run dotnet restore --verbosity detailed to identify which package is failing.
  3. Update the package version to one that exists with dotnet list package --outdated.
  4. If you need an offline restore path, restore from a known packages cache such as dotnet restore --packages .nuget/packages.

Validation

  • dotnet restore completes successfully.
  • The CI build proceeds past the restore phase without the original NuGet error.

Likely files to inspect

  • *.csproj
  • *.sln
  • NuGet.Config
  • global.json

Run Faultline

faultline analyze build.log
faultline explain dotnet-restore
faultline workflow build.log --json --mode agent

Search phrases this page answers

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  • faultline explain dotnet-restore

Generated from playbooks/bundled/log/build/dotnet-restore.yaml. Do not edit directly — run make docs-generate.