Resolving the "Command 'dotnet ef' Not Found" Issue When Creating Migrations

If you run the following command:

dotnet ef migrations add InitialCreate

If you get this error:

Could not execute because the specified command or file was not found.
Possible reasons for this include:

- You misspelled a built-in dotnet command.
- You intended to execute a .NET Core program, but dotnet-ef does not exist.
- You intended to run a global tool, but a dotnet-prefixed executable with this name could not be found on the PATH.

To install the dotnet-ef tool, run the following command:

.NET 9

dotnet tool install --global dotnet-ef --version 9.*

.NET 8

dotnet tool install --global dotnet-ef --version 8.*

.NET 7

dotnet tool install --global dotnet-ef --version 7.*

.NET 6

dotnet tool install --global dotnet-ef --version 6.*

.NET 5

dotnet tool install --global dotnet-ef --version 5.*

.NET Core 3

dotnet tool install --global dotnet-ef --version 3.*

The dotnet ef tool is no longer included in the .NET Core SDK by default.

Instead, it is now distributed as a regular .NET CLI tool, which can be installed either globally (available across all projects) or locally (specific to a project). This change provides greater flexibility in managing the tool's version independently of the .NET Core SDK.

You can also resolve this issue by installing the dotnet-ef tool locally using the following steps:

Create a local tool manifest in the project directory:

dotnet new tool-manifest

Install the dotnet-ef tool locally with the specified version:

dotnet tool install --local dotnet-ef --version 5.0.6

Once installed, use dotnet dotnet-ef instead of dotnet-ef to execute commands.