EF Migrations migrate.exe generate script

Since the 10/22/2017 you can do it thanks to this PR: https://github.com/aspnet/EntityFramework6/commit/02ec6b8c9279f93f80eeed1234e5ce0acfce5f31

Here the Entity Framework 6.2 release notes that implements this functionality (see 'Migrate.exe should support -script option' section): https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2017/10/26/entity-framework-6-2-runtime-released/

Follow those steps:

1. Copy the file migrate.exe from the '\packages\EntityFramework.6.2.0\tools' to the target 'bin' folder (for example on the production server) after that you deployed the new assembly that contains the new migrations
2. Open the command line in the folder and launch this command:

migrate.exe yourMigrationAssembly.dll /startupConfigurationFile=”..\web.config” /scriptFile="migrationOutput.sql"

It will generate the the file "migrationOutput.sql" that contains the SQL you have to execute on your target environment DB based on the migrations that are not yet applied on it.

I encountered the same problem and indeed the option is available in the package manager console in Visual Studio. So I opened up the powershell script and the entity framework dll and built a small executable so you can generate the scripts from command line.The source code is available as-is and without any warranty here;

• EF6
• EF5

You can write a simple c# console application or use something like Linqpad to generate the script using the Entity Framework Infrastructure objects. You will just need to load the DLL with your DbMigrationsConfiguration class and instantiate it. Here is the code similar to what is working for me:

using System.Data.Entity.Infrastructure;
using System.Data.Entity.Migrations;
using System.Data.Entity.Migrations.Infrastructure;

const string ScriptFile = "Migration.sql";
const string ConnectionString = @"Server=.\SqlExpress;Database=...;Trusted_Connection=True;";
const bool AutomaticMigrationDataLossAllowed = false;

var targetDb = new DbConnectionInfo(ConnectionString, "System.Data.SqlClient");
var config = new MyDbMigrationsConfiguration
{
    AutomaticMigrationDataLossAllowed = AutomaticMigrationDataLossAllowed,
    TargetDatabase = targetDb,
};

var migrator = new DbMigrator(config);
var scripter = new MigratorScriptingDecorator(migrator);
var script = scripter.ScriptUpdate(null, null);

File.WriteAllText(ScriptFile, script);
Console.WriteLine("Migration Script Generated: " + ScriptFile);