VS_PACKAGE_REFERENCES does not work for native (C/C++) Nuget packages that use packages.config

When I use VS_PACKAGE_REFERENCES in a CMake, like so:

set_property(TARGET ${TARGET_NAME} PROPERTY
  VS_PACKAGE_REFERENCES "boost_1.7.0")

, it generates PackageReference in .vcxproj files, which doesn't do anything for C/C++ projects that require packages.config. The docs describe PackageReference as unsupported for C/C++ projects:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/nuget/consume-packages/package-references-in-project-files#project-type-support

CMake expects to find a package on a user's system, which works for system-wide packages, like dnf or apt, but doesn't work at all for project-level packages, which cannot be found at the CMake generation phase and instead need to be installed after project generation, but before the build phase.

VS_PACKAGE_REFERENCES or, some appropriately-named C/C++ equivalent of it, should translate into creating packages.config and packages.<project-name>.config for C/C++ projects and should work as if this sequence of steps was used.

• Generate VS solution and projects

cmake -S . -B build -G "Visual Studio 17 2022"

• Switch to Visual Studio UI and install Nuget packages for the generated VS solution, as if by this Nuget package console command:

Install-Package boost -ProjectName my-project-using-boost

This step downloads referenced Nuget packages, unpacks them into the packages directory in the solution directory and injects a series of elements into .vcxproj files that come from Nuget packages in the form of .props and .targets files, which sets up C/C++ includes and libraries.

• Build all configurations

cmake --build build --config Debug
cmake --build build --config Release

This step uses includes and libraries injected into .vcxproj files in the previous step.

Note that there is no way find_package could possibly find these headers/libraries because they don't exist until project directory structure is generated.

The only way today to accomplish this is to patch generated projects, but this cannot be automated reliably because Nuget doesn't have a CLI to install a package outside of VS UI and patching generated projects is error-prone, as CMake may generate different structure when other options change. Plus, it doesn't work at all in the new Visual Studio's Open Folder feature, which re-generates projects every time CMakeLists.txt is changed.