Error MSB4006: There is a circular dependency -- Creating migrations

While trying to setup an EF Core project, the following error occurs when creating the migration.

<path>\foo\view\obj\view.csproj.EntityFrameworkCore.targets(4,5): error MSB4006: There is a circular dependency in the target dependency graph involving target “GetEFProjectMetadata”. [<path>\foo\view\view.csproj] Unable to retrieve project metadata. Ensure it’s an MSBuild-based .NET Core project. If you’re using custom BaseIntermediateOutputPath or MSBuildProjectExtensionsPath values, Use the --msbuildprojectextensionspath option.

This is a typical MVVM WPF project, where the (EF Core) model, view-model(s), and (WPF) view(s) are each separated into their own projects. The model and view-model projects are NetStandard 2.0 projects, while the WPF is a .Net Framework desktop application. (I plan to change this to a Core project once Dotnet Core 3.0 is released.)

Here are the reproduction steps.

• Create solution folder ‘foo’. mkdir foo

• Create solution ‘foo’. <..\foo>dotnet new sln -n foo

• Create a library project ‘model’. <..\foo>dotnet new classlib -o model

• Create a library project ‘modelviews’. <..\foo>dotnet new classlib -o modelviews

• Add projects to solution.

<..\foo>dotnet sln foo.sln add model/model.csproj
<..\foo>dotnet sln foo.sln add modelviews/modelviews.csproj

• Open solution in Visual Studio. Add a WPF App (.NET Framework) project ‘view’ to the solution.

• Change directory to ‘model’ project. <..\foo>cd model

• Install EF Core for SqlLite

<..\foo\model>dotnet add package Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Sqlite
<..\foo\model>dotnet add package Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Design

• Create model ‘model.cs’ in ‘model’ project.

using System;
using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace Foo
{
    public class Foo
    {
        public int Id { get; set; }
        public int Name { get; set; }
    }

    public class Bar
    {
        public int Id { get; set; }
        public int Name { get; set; }
    }

    public class FooContext : DbContext
    {
        public DbSet<Foo> Foos { get; set; }
        public DbSet<Bar> Bars { get; set; }

        protected override void OnConfiguring(DbContextOptionsBuilder optionsBuilder)
        {
            optionsBuilder.UseSqlite("Data Source=foo.db");
        }
    }
}

• Create initial migration in the model project. <..\foo>dotnet ef migrations add Initial --project model/model.csproj --startup-project view/view.csproj

This results in the error:

<path>\foo\view\obj\view.csproj.EntityFrameworkCore.targets(4,5): error MSB4006: There is a circular dependency in the target dependency graph involving target “GetEFProjectMetadata”. [<path>\foo\view\view.csproj] Unable to retrieve project metadata. Ensure it’s an MSBuild-based .NET Core project. If you’re using custom BaseIntermediateOutputPath or MSBuildProjectExtensionsPath values, Use the --msbuildprojectextensionspath option.

What can be done to resolve or workaround this issue?

Version information: -Dotnet Core: 2.2.102 -Visual Studio: 15.9.4 -EF Core: 2.2.1 -OS: Windows 10 Pro (1809 – Build 17763.195)

[chihabhajji]

try to cd into nested project if you’re running it from top level directory

[bricelam]

It sounds like view.csproj isn’t on of the new “SDK” projects (i.e. it doesn’t start with <Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">). dotnet ef will not work. Instead, use the PMC commands:

Add-Migration Initial -Project model -StartupProject view