Constrain PackageReference upgrade version when update-package run

From this answer:

At the moment, this is not possible. See this GitHub issue for tracking.

The cli commands for adding references however support updating single packages in a project by re-running dotnet add package The.Package.Id.

From GitHub Issue 4358:

There is no PackageReference replacement for update yet, the command to modify references is only in dotnet.

You might want to weigh in on the open feature request GitHub issue 4103 about this (4358 was closed as a duplicate). Microsoft hasn't put a high priority on this feature (it was originally opened in October, 2016).

Possible Workarounds

Option 1

It is possible to "update" a dependency by removing and adding the reference. According to this post, specifying the version explicitly with the command will install the exact version, not the latest version. I have also confirmed you can add version constraints with the command:

dotnet remove NewCsproj.csproj package Newtonsoft.Json
dotnet add NewCsproj.csproj package Newtonsoft.Json -v [10.0.3]

What you could do with these commands:

1. Keep version numbers of packages around in a text file (perhaps just keep it named packages.config).
2. Use a script to create your own "update" command that reads the text file and processes each dependency in a loop using the above 2 commands. The script could be setup to be passed a .sln file to process each of the projects within it.

Option 2

Use MSBuild to "import" dependencies from a common MSBuild file, where you can update the versions in one place.

You can define your own <IncludeDependencies> element to include specific dependencies to each project.

SomeProject.csproj

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">

    <IncludeDependencies>Newtonsoft.Json;FastMoving</IncludeDependencies>
    <Import Project="..\..\..\Dependencies.proj" />
  
    ...
  
</Project>

Dependencies.proj

<Project>

    <ItemGroup>
        <PackageReference Condition="$(IncludeDependencies.Contains('Newtonsoft.Json'))" Include="Newtonsoft.Json" Version="[10.0.3]" />
        <PackageReference Condition="$(IncludeDependencies.Contains('FastMoving'))" Include="FastMoving" Version="3.332.0" />
    </ItemGroup>
  
</Project>