How to fix: Command dotnet ef not found

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.

The most likely reason for this error message is that you don’t have the dotnet ef tool installed.

Starting with ASP.NET Core 3, the dotnet ef command tool is no longer part of the .NET Core SDK. This change allows the team to ship dotnet ef as a regular .NET CLI tool that can be installed as either a global or local tool. This is valid for all distributions, whether you’re working with Visual Studio on Windows, or you’re using dotnet on a Mac or Ubuntu Linux.

For example, to be able to manage migrations or scaffold a DbContext, install dotnet ef as a global tool typing the following command:

dotnet tool install --global dotnet-ef

If you want to install a specific version, you can specify the —version parameter. For example:

dotnet tool install --global dotnet-ef --version 3.*
dotnet tool install --global dotnet-ef --version 5.*
dotnet tool install --global dotnet-ef --version 6.*
dotnet tool install --global dotnet-ef --version 7.*
dotnet tool install --global dotnet-ef --version 8.*

Uninstall dotnet-ef

If you’re done with the tool and are looking to uninstall dotnet-ef, you can do so using the dotnet tool uninstall command.

dotnet tool uninstall dotnet-ef --global