tooling

Tooling

The dotnet ef CLI and Visual Studio Package Manager Console commands for migrations, scaffolding, and compiled models.

dotnet-ef CLI (src/dotnet-ef/)

RootCommand parses global options. Subcommands implemented in src/ef/Commands/. Each invokes MSBuild to build, then shells out via dotnet exec ef.dll, which hosts OperationExecutor.

PMC (src/EFCore.Tools/)

PowerShell module: Add-Migration, Update-Database, Scaffold-DbContext, Optimize-DbContext, etc.

MSBuild Tasks (src/EFCore.Tasks/)

NuGet package Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Tasks provides build/publish-time compiled model and precompiled query generation. Targets in buildTransitive/Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Tasks.targets.

Command Option Ownership

Trace an option to the code that consumes it before changing command or operation contracts. The outer dotnet-ef launcher builds the project and forwards remaining command-line arguments to ef.dll; the inner command under src/ef/Commands/ parses command-specific options.

• Keep presentation-only behavior in the inner command. For example, suppressing the completion message from MigrationsAddCommand.Execute() should guard its Reporter.WriteInformation() call and must not change IOperationExecutor.AddMigration().
• Forward a value through OperationExecutorBase only when the design-time operation in Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Design needs it.
• Treat PMC and EFCore.Tasks as separate entry points. Change them only when the requested behavior applies to those surfaces too.

Testing

• CLI tests: test/dotnet-ef.Tests/, test/ef.Tests/
• EFCore.Tasks has no dedicated test project — for task/target changes, create a test project and manually run dotnet build / dotnet publish with EFOptimizeContext=true to verify

Validation

• For tool changes, create a test project and manually run affected commands to verify behavior
• dotnet ef migrations script output matches expected DDL