Entity Framework Core Migrations Script Generator

Entity Framework Core Migrations Script Generator is a very simple extension to make it easy to generate migration script for projects using Entity Framework Core with Code-First. This tool internally calls dotnet ef migrations script.

This tool can be installed from Visual Studio Marketplace.

How to generate migration scripts

With this task it's very easy to generate migration scripts:

Add Entity Framework Core Migrations Script Generator task to your build pipeline.
Select the project where the database project.
Enter the names of the database contexts.
If your database context is defined in a library, you also need to select an executable project that is using this library as start-up project.
You could also change the directory where the migrations scripts should be stored. By default they are stored in a folder named migrations.
If you are using .NET Core 3, you could enable Install dependencies for .NET Core 3 to auto install the global tool dotnet-ef.
If you are using .NET Core 2, you may be able to build your application but you get an error when creating migration scripts. If that's the case you're probably using .NET Core 3 SDK which doesn't have built-in support to do this. To solve this, just add Use .NET Core before this task and select version 2.2.207 for instance.

When the build is completed you should have migrations scripts stored in the package. They named {{NameOfTheDatabaseContext}}.sql. Under most circumstances it's safe to run these migrations on every release even if you haven't done any changes.

How to apply migrations to your databases

When you have your migration scripts ready you just need to apply them in a release pipeline. If you have your databases in Azure you could to like this:

Add the task Azure SQL Database Deployment to your release pipeline.
Enter the details of your database.
In the option SQL Script select the migration script from the package.

If you have several databases, add a new task for each database.

Supported versions

Both .NET Core 2 and .NET Core 3 with Entity Framework 2 and 3 and 3.1 is supported. That said, if you are using .NET Core 3.x this tool requires that the global tool dotnet-ef is installed. You could do this easily be enable Install dependencies for .NET Core 3.

If you are using .NET Core 2, you may be able to build your application but you get an error when creating migration scripts. If that's the case you probably are using .NET Core 3 SDK which doesn't have build-in support to do this. To solve this, just add Use .NET Core before this task and select version 2.2.207 for instance.

Notes about the source

In the folder efcore-migration-task the complete source is for this project.

The folder NetCoreTestApplication contains a test project with two database contexts that could be used for generating migration scripts.

How to make changes

Changes are hopefully never needed :-) But if the logic need to be changes index.ts should be modified. If the UI need to be changed task.json should be updated.

How to test changes

There are some commands that are good to know to test the extension locally. These should be executed in the folder efcore-migration-task/efcore-migration-script-generator

This compiles the typescript file index.ts typescript file into index.js:

tsc

These commands setup environment variables for a scenario where the database context is defined in the executable project. These are used for setting input values for the script.

$env:INPUT_PROJECTPATH="C:/Users/msn/Source/Repos/EF-Migrations-Script-Generator-Task/NetCoreTestApplication/NetCoreTestApplication/NetCoreTestApplication.csproj"
$env:INPUT_TARGETFOLDER="c:/temp"
$env:INPUT_DATABASECONTEXTS="FirstDatabaseContext`nSecondDatabaseContext"

These commands setup environment variables for a scenario where the database context is defined in a library instead of the executable project:

$env:INPUT_PROJECTPATH="C:/Users/msn/Source/Repos/EF-Migrations-Script-Generator-Task/NetCoreTestApplication/NetCoreTestLibrary/NetCoreTestLibrary.csproj"
$env:INPUT_STARTUPPROJECTPATH="C:/Users/msn/Source/Repos/EF-Migrations-Script-Generator-Task/NetCoreTestApplication/NetCoreTestApplication/NetCoreTestApplication.csproj"
$env:INPUT_TARGETFOLDER="c:/temp"
$env:INPUT_DATABASECONTEXTS="LibraryDatabaseContext`nInternalLibraryDatabaseContext"

This executes the script.