.NET 6.0 RC1 release availability & Workaround

Hello,

I have upgraded to .NET 6.0 RC1. I have also upgraded Entity Framework Core Tools to the 6.0.0-rc.1.21452.10 version. But the NuGet Npgsql.EntityFrameworkCore.PostgreSQL package has still the version 6.0.0-preview7.

When trying to generate a migration, there is the following error :

Method 'AppendIdentityWhereCondition' in type 'Npgsql.EntityFrameworkCore.PostgreSQL.Update.Internal.NpgsqlUpdateSqlGenerator' from assembly 'Npgsql.EntityFrameworkCore.PostgreSQL, Version=6.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=5d8b90d52f46fda7' does not have an implementation.

So I guess this is normal. I have tried to downgrade the Entity Framework Core Tools to 6.0.0-preview.7.21378.4. When doing the command dotnet tool update --global dotnet-ef --version 6.0.0-preview.7.21378.4, I get the error message :

The requested version 6.0.0-preview.7.21378.4 is lower than existing version 6.0.0-rc.1.21452.10.

Questions :

A. When Npgsql.EntityFrameworkCore.PostgreSQL .NET 6.0 RC1 will be available ? B. Is there a command to force to an update of Entity Framework Core Tools to a lower version ? I couldn’t find one. If yes, could it solve my problem ?

Thanks for any answer.

[roji]

@boukenka this is on the top of my list, but it may still take a few days - please be patient.

[muhdamean]

So… it’s generally recommended to use UTC timestamps everywhere - this way you don’t have a dependency on your server (or database) timezone, and timestamps don’t need to be converted. And yes, when doing this you would typically convert your UTC timestamps to the user’s time zone at the very edge, i.e. when displaying it; this decouples your actual timestamp data (in the database) from any particular user, and also allows you to display the same UTC timestamp to different users in different timezones.

If this is what you want, then yes - make sure your database column has the type timestamp with time zone (which represents a UTC timestamp in PostgreSQL), and use DateTime.UtcNow instead of DateTime.Now in .NET (the latter generates a local timestamp based on the machine’s timezone).

However, pay special attention to existing data when doing this change! If you already have columns with data in your database, make sure you convert them appropriately (I’ve written some docs on this).

Hope that clarifies things a bit. This is quite a non-trivial change, and I’m very interested in people’s reactions/opinions on it - don’t hesitate to post back with more questions etc.

Thanks for this detailed explanation