Entity Framework did it again. And then it didn’t.
If you have been with Entity Framework long enough you remember it had quite a ride with versions. Let’s have a small recap, shall we? That will give us some context for recent days.
The first version of Entity Framework (at that time called ADO.NET Entity Framework) was just v1. It was released with .NET 3.5 SP1 (yes, SP1). Then the v4 came out. There was no v2 or v3. The v4 had it’s number aligned with .NET Framework version (.NET Framework 4 being obviously the version where it was introduced). Then the .NET Framework 4.5 was released. But the next major version of Entity Framework was numbered v5. At that time the decision had been made to switch to semantic versioning. Then then v6 was released. This version was first version not coupled to .NET Framework. It was (is) standalone NuGet package (although previous version had parts as NuGet as well).
The v6 NuGet package is called EntityFramework. I would say a good choice. So you’re keeping this one up-to-date and that’s it. But lately the started to be some magic happening. Basically creating NuGet package with version in a name – EntityFramework7 to be exact. Semantic versioning on NuGet goes out of window. When I read the proposal I was laughing. Because it was nice to see another magic going to happen with versions. You can read everything here, here and here.
Eventually the arguments were so strong the team decided to keep just EntityFramework and really stick to versioning. So it’s happy end.
It was just so déjà vu.
