Question

Using EF migrations I wish to automate running a migration against an environment. I know I can do this via powershell call to Update-Database, but is there a way of doing this via the framework without having to launch an external process?

Answer 1

Yes, in your DbContext:

public static void SetInitializer()
{
    Database.SetInitializer(new MigrateDatabaseToLatestVersion<DataContext, Configuration>());
}

Where Configuration is:

internal sealed class Configuration : DbMigrationsConfiguration<DataContext>
{
    public Configuration()
    {
        AutomaticMigrationsEnabled = true;
    }
}

You’ll still need to release a Migration file for migrations that will make changes that will result in dataloss (unless you set AutomaticMigrationDataLossAllowed to true in the Configuration class – danger!) but you can make these files using the Add-Migration command in PMC.