Why should you care?

Without Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer and dotnet-ef, ShopNest cannot define DbContext or evolve schema through migrations.

See it live — copy this example

Paste into a .NET project with EF Core packages, then run with LocalDB/SQL Server (dotnet ef / dotnet run).

# ShopNest.Infrastructure
dotnet add package Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer --version 8.*
dotnet add package Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Design --version 8.*

dotnet tool install --global dotnet-ef
dotnet ef --version

What happened?

• SqlServer is the runtime provider.
• Design supports migrations at build/design time.
• dotnet-ef is the CLI for migrations add and database update.

Practice next

1. Run dotnet --version and confirm 8.x or 9.x SDK.
2. Create ShopNest.Infrastructure class library if missing.
3. Run the package and tool commands from the example.
4. Run dotnet list package | findstr EntityFramework to audit versions across projects.
5. Install dotnet-ef with a specific version: dotnet tool install --global dotnet-ef --version 8.*

Remember

NuGet packages bring EF Core into the solution. dotnet-ef enables migration CLI commands. Provider package must match your database engine.

ShopNest CI bootstrap

Azure DevOps pipeline runs dotnet restore after pinning EF Core 8 packages in ShopNest.Infrastructure.

Outcome: Every developer and build agent shares the same EF tooling versions.