F# data access and EF migrations - entity-framework

Question

I have been using F# for some time, and really liking it.
I want to use type providers for data access, but would love to have entity framework migrations.
Can I use EF migrations without entity framework? I am fine with writing migration code by hand, hopefully in F#.

Answer 1

In the case where you want to use EFCore, it's possible to isolate only the migrations in a C# project with MigrationsAssembly.
For example in a DbContext module:
let setupOptions (optionsBuilder: DbContextOptionsBuilder) =
optionsBuilder.UseNpgsql(
"Host=localhost;Database=mydb;Username=postgres;Password=postgres",
fun opt -> opt.MigrationsAssembly "MyProject.Data.Migrations" |> ignore)
|> ignore
Services configuration:
services.AddDbContext<DbContext.MyDbName>(DbContext.setupOptions)
CLI:
dotnet ef migrations add CreateFoo -p ./MyProject.Data.Migrations -s ./MyProject.Api -v
dotnet ef database update -p ./MyProject.Data.Migrations -s ./MyProject.Api -v
There is also a work in progress project to support F# design-time:
https://github.com/bricelam/EFCore.FSharp

Answer 2

F# type providers imply that there is already external data source i.e. they are inherently "Db First". Using EF Code First only to automatically generate migrations is not the best idea, I recommend plain SQL and some tools to keep track of migrations such as dbup.
I answered it in details in similar but bigger question.

Answer 3

You can certainly use EF migrations without using EF in your app. Create a separate project and use Code First migrations.
I'm not aware that the migrations scaffolding feature supports F#. Either suffer with C# for migrations or translate the code yourself?