AddUserSecrets not working when running migrations

Question

Setup for development on local machine:

• ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT is set to Local (so that appsettings.local.json is used for non sensitive configs)
• We use user secrets to assist with secrets (inside the startup, we call AddUserSecrets(...))

Problem:

• When EF migrations commands are run with ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT set to Local, the AddUserSecrets gets called, but does NOT end up loading the secrets from the secrets.json file.

Couple of interesting observations:

• When the application itself is run with ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT set to Local, the AddUserSecrets gets called and it does load the secrets from secrets.json successfully -- so loading user secrets for non-development is not a problem
• When EF migrations commands are run with ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT set to Development, the AddUserSecrets gets called and it does load the secrets from secrets.json successfully -- so loading user secrets for non application entry points is not a problem

Note

• We are using local to signify development on local machine since we already use development to signify a deployed environment

How can I get user secrets to be loaded properly when ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT is NOT development when running EF Core migrations?

Answer 1

As @browsermator mentioned in the comments, from EF Core 5, it will set the ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT and DOTNET_ENVIRONMENT environment variables to "Development".

But it is possible to set a custom environment when using cli command:

dotnet ef database update -- --environment Local

For more details please check the document.