[Bug]: View License dialog does not display license content

[mbranscomb]

NuGet Product Used

Visual Studio Package Management UI

Product Version

NuGet Package Manager 6.3.0
Microsoft Visual Studio Enterprise 2022
Version 17.3.2
VisualStudio.17.Release/17.3.2+32819.101

Worked before?

Unknown

Impact

It's more difficult to complete my work

Repro Steps & Context

Repro

• Open VS2022
• Choose New Project
• Create new WPF Application from project template
• Choose .NET 6 (Long-term support)
• Right click project > Manage NuGet packages for project
• Search for Microsoft.TestPlatform
• Select Microsoft.TestPlatform
• Check project
• Click Install
• Click OK
• On License Acceptance dialog click View License link

Outcome

Expectations

License text is visible in dialog (previous behavior)

Context

Use of our NuGet package (https://www.nuget.org/packages/Esri.ArcGISRuntime.WPF) requires license acceptance.

Verbose Logs

No response

[zivkan]

for triage: I was able to reproduce. The package contains an embedded license.

There are at least 2 problems:

1. Getting embedded licence doesn't work

NuGetPackageFileService.GetEmbeddedLicenseAsync tries to get a URI from an in-memory cache, but when I tried debugging, the key wasn't in the cache. The code path has no fallback when the key is not in the cache, which suggests to me that NuGet isn't using it like a cache at all. This causes the service to return null, instead of a stream, and the other end gets a null string as the file contents, which in turn gets passed to GenerateParagraphs, which then throws a null reference exception.

2. The UI shows the "loading license file" message, even though the code threw an exception and it's no longer attempting to load the license file contents.

[mbranscomb]

@zivkan @nkolev92 Is the best repo/location for this issue? Would be great to see it solved in an upcoming release of VS.

[nkolev92]

Yes, @mbranscomb this is the right repo.

We prioritize investigations based on community engagement such as comments and up-votes.
This is not on our immediate (think, a month or two) backlog right now, but we'd like to have it solved.

[artem-iron]

Same issue here, EULA.txt is included in the package, but when the package is being installed, although EULA.txt is present in [user]/.nuget/packages/[package]/[version]/ the dialog window just shows

[BretJohnson]

Isn't this a legal / compliance issue, not showing licenses?
Also, per the original problem report, this is a regression.

It's of course up to the NuGet team, but I'm a bit surprised that those two things aren't enough to make it meet the fix bar.

In any case, I was just weighing in here as it came up in this Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/khellang/status/1633468315208130561?s=20. Thx.

[BretJohnson]

FYI - The Microsoft.Data.SqlClient package has the same issue.

[JimBobSquarePants]

Can we please get some feedback here. The issue is critical from a legal perspective.

[artem-iron]

What is most irritating is that links to license urls are deprecated for 4 years already, so you kind of need to use files, but it doesn't work and is not being worked on.