Entity Framework 6 (EF6) is an object-relational mapper that enables .NET developers to work with relational data using domain-specific objects. It eliminates the need for most of the data-access code that developers usually need to write.
Entity Framework 6 is developed by the Entity Framework team in collaboration with a community of open source developers.
The latest version of EF6Tools is still supported by Microsoft, however the EF6Tools are no longer being actively developed. This means that:
- Security fixes will continue to be provided, consistent with Microsoft’s support lifecycle.
- High‑impact bugs: may be addressed at Microsoft’s discretion, typically if they affect a large portion of the user base.
- Other bugs will not be fixed.
- New features will not be implemented
This is consistent with the EF6 support policy.
This repository is for the Entity Framework 6 Visual Studio tools. Entity Framework Core is a lightweight and extensible version of Entity Framework and is maintained at https://github.com/dotnet/efcore.
Further development of the EF6 PowerTools is happening in a community-driven project, the EF6 PowerTools Community Edition.
If you want to use an officially supported Entity Framework release to develop your applications then head to https://docs.microsoft.com/ef/ef6/ where you can find installation information, documentation, tutorials, samples, and videos.
If you want to try out the latest changes that have not been officially released yet, you can choose to build the code. We regularily also make nightly builds of the Entity Framework codebase available.
There are lots of ways to contribute to the Entity Framework project including testing out nighty builds, reporting bugs, and contributing code.
All code submissions will be rigorously reviewed and tested by the Entity Framework team, and only those that meet an extremely high bar for both quality and design/roadmap appropriateness will be merged into the source.