'packages' folder and the Unity Package Manager

So in 2017.2 the 'packages' folder in root of a project (not in Assets folder) is being scanned by Unity and the external assemblies are loaded into the Editor - I get a compilation error on duplicated assemblies.

I assume this is due to the Unity Package Manager which was introduced in this new release.

The problem is that 'packages' folder is a special folder in many IDE's, specifically by default, Nuget uses this folder to store the nuget packages.

What is the idea behind this behaviour and what is the future for this folder? It surely is not being treated as a package source, because Unity tries to load every assemblies from this folder by default, which most likely prevents having multiple versions of the same dll.

Please at least change the default folder name from 'packages' to something else, so it does not interfere with core tools in .NET ecosystem. Leaving this feature in such state will definitely affect a wide range of projects using packages folder for other purpose.

 

I've submitted a bug report for this problem, as you asked:

(Case 941516) Packages folder scanned by Editor causing compilation errors

I've attached an example project which allows to reproduce this issue .