| name | tooling |
| description | Implementation details for the EF Core dotnet-ef CLI and tooling. Use when changing dotnet-ef commands, the ef wrapper, EFCore.Tools (PMC), or EFCore.Tasks MSBuild integration. |
| user-invocable | false |
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.
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
