MissingManifestResourceException on System.Data.Entity.Properties.Resources.Migrate.resources for assembly EntityFramework

Question

I'm not so sure this is a question as much as it is a statement. I struggled with this error for a long time before I finally found the solution.

We had updated Entity Framework from 6.2.0 to 6.4.0. Our build process worked perfectly, but our releases were choking on the Migrate phase. The error logged was:

Unhandled Exception: System.Resources.MissingManifestResourceException: 
    Could not find any resources appropriate for the specified culture or the neutral culture.  
    Make sure "System.Data.Entity.Properties.Resources.Migrate.resources" was correctly embedded or linked into assembly "EntityFramework" at compile time, or that all the satellite assemblies required are loadable and fully signed.

I searched all over and found things referring to resx files not being embedded etc... nothing I tried worked.

I finally found that with the update to Entity Framework 6.3.0, the MIGRATE.EXE command is not used anymore. It was replaced with EF6.EXE. That new command line utility has a slightly different set of command line parameters but once we updated our release process, things began to behave as expected.

I hope this helps others.

Answer 1

I finally found that with the update to Entity Framework 6.3.0, the MIGRATE.EXE command is not used anymore. It was replaced with EF6.EXE. That new command line utility has a slightly different set of command line parameters but once we updated our release process, things began to behave as expected.

TL;DR

Don't use migrate.exe.... use ef6.exe

I hope this helps others.