Installing dotnet tool

[atenghamn]

Can I manage my dotnet tool installations through dotneup, like keeping track of dotnet-ef? Or have I got it all backwards? :)

[yhay81]

Short answer: not with dotnetup itself. dotnetup is the SDK/runtime bootstrapper and version manager; .NET tools such as dotnet-ef are a separate NuGet-based feature managed by dotnet tool.

If the goal is reproducibility / keeping track of the tool, make it a local tool and commit the manifest:

# from the repository root
dotnet new tool-manifest          # explicit and works across SDK versions
dotnet tool install dotnet-ef
git add .config/dotnet-tools.json

After cloning the repo (or on CI), install exactly what the manifest declares with:

dotnet tool restore
dotnet ef --version

That gives each repository its own pinned dotnet-ef version and avoids depending on whatever happens to be installed for the current user. The SDK's tool docs describe the manifest as the mechanism for tracking local tools: https://learn.microsoft.com/dotnet/core/tools/global-tools#install-a-local-tool

If you deliberately want one user-wide copy instead, use:

dotnet tool install --global dotnet-ef
dotnet tool list --global
dotnet tool update --global dotnet-ef

but global tools do not give you a checked-in, restorable inventory. So the useful split is: dotnetup manages .NET SDKs/runtimes; dotnet tool + dotnet-tools.json manages tools such as dotnet-ef.

[atenghamn]

Thank you so much for this explanation!