Modernize EF Core tooling

[ajcvickers]

.NET platforms have evolved since we first introduced tooling for migrations, database scaffolding, etc. in EF Core 1.0. We plan to update the tooling architecture to better support new platforms, like .NET MAUI, and to streamline the process in areas such as the use of multiple projects. This includes providing better feedback when things go wrong, better integration with logging, performance, and new sugar.

[RobertoGFilho]

I've been trying to work with ef core 7 pre release on MAUI and i could notice that iOS is not working. But Android and Windows work.

[seclerp]

Hey @bricelam @ajcvickers, do you folks have some details about what particular will be updated in EF Core 7 CLI tooling? I'm working on the EF Core plugin for Rider and want to introduce some tracked items to include in the new plugin milestone attached to the EF Core 7 release.

[bricelam]

@seclerp This specific issue had to be cut from the 7.0.0 milestone. It's mostly a duplicate of #18840.

The big tooling change in EF7 was support for T4 templates. See the docs for details. You could add a UI gesture for dotnet new ef-templates (the VS plugin already did this). A bigger-impact change, however, would be to update JetBrains/ForTea to resolve assembly references from the project's NuGet packages.

[seclerp]

Thanks! Can't find Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Templates template package. Is it publicly available already? What I see currently in VS plugin is that templates are shipped with the plugin itself, in a .zip archive.

[smitpatel]

https://github.com/dotnet/efcore/tree/release/7.0/src/EFCore.Templates

The source for the package. It is in daily builds not yet released to nuget.
Daily builds - https://github.com/dotnet/efcore/blob/release/7.0/docs/DailyBuilds.md

[seclerp]

Does T4 supports NuGet references via "assembly" directive in general? It will be cool if T4 spec exists somewhere.

[bricelam]

Not exactly a spec, but there's a good description of T4 here: https://docs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/modeling/writing-a-t4-text-template

[bricelam]

But no, NuGet wasn't a thing when T4 was designed. Regardless, the TeaFour plugin should still be able to look for matching assemblies inside installed NuGet packages.