The Code Generation tool is an external tool used for generating required classes and ORM mappings that are necessary to build the solution. Code generation is required when working on the solution to create the core objects, profiles, and extensions. This article describes how code generation is built into the initdev command for local development and how it can be executed from a CICD pipeline. 

Running initdev 

The code generation utility is integrated into the initdev process. When you run Initialize-PowershellForDevelopment.ps1 followed by initdev (as outlined in the Getting Started Guide), the codegen utility is downloaded from MyGet into the tools folder under the Ed-Fi-ODS-Implementation repository and is executed after the Invoke-NewDevelopmentAppSettings task.

A successful initdev execution will display the tasks executed and their duration as shown, and you can see that code generation utility is downloaded and installed during the process.

Manual Execution

The code generation utility can be run from the command line.

Installation

To Install the code generation tool manually, run Initialize-PowershellForDevelopment.ps1 script from a PowerShell prompt as outlined in the Getting Started Guide, followed by the Install-CodeGen-Utiltity command. This will pull the current version of the tool, and install it into the tools folder under the Ed-Fi-ODS-Implementation repository.

Execution

To run code generation independently from the build process, the tool can be executed by calling the PowerShell command Run-CodeGen. This will execute the generation process for all required classes.