.NET Core 2 New CLI Commands

Several tools available only on a per-project basis using DotnetCliToolReference are now available as part of the .NET Core SDK. These tools include:

dotnet watch

dotnet watch provides a file system watcher that waits for a file to change before executing a designated set of commands. For example, the following command automatically rebuilds the current project and generates verbose output whenever a file in it changes:

.NET Core CLI

dotnet watch -- --verbose build

• The -- option that precedes the --verbose option delimits the options passed directly to the dotnet watch command from the arguments passed to the child dotnet process.
• Without the -- option, the --verbose option applies to the dotnet watch command, not the dotnet build command.

dotnet-watch configuration

Some configuration options can be passed to dotnet watch through environment variables. The available variables are:

dotnet dev-certs

dotnet dev-certs generates and manages certificates used during development in ASP.NET Core applications.

dotnet user-secrets

dotnet user-secrets manages the secrets in a user secret store in ASP.NET Core applications.

dotnet sql-cache

dotnet sql-cache creates a table and indexes in a Microsoft SQL Server database to be used for distributed caching.

dotnet ef

dotnet ef is a tool for managing databases, DbContext objects, and migrations in Entity Framework Core applications.

• The command-line interface (CLI) tools for Entity Framework Core perform design-time development tasks.
• For example, they create migrations, apply migrations, and generate code for a model based on an existing database.
• The commands are an extension to the cross-platform dotnet command, which is part of the .NET Core SDK.
• These tools work with .NET Core projects.