Entity Framework Peeves? Code it Yourself! -- Visual Studio Magazine

Data Driverby David Ramel

Entity Framework Peeves? Code it Yourself!

A lot of data developers were frustrated with missing features of the Entity Framework as it continued to evolve in the past few years, such as the oft-requested enum support, for example.

Well, that support is included in the upcoming EF 5 release, of course. But beyond that, Microsoft -- in yet another implementation of its turnabout embrace of the open source movement -- has put its flagship object-relational mapping source code up for grabs on CodePlex, the company announced recently.

On the open source software hosting site are the EF runtime and Power Tools, with more to come. And developers have been busy, with changes being made right up until Monday, with a code contribution "Making IQueryable implementation on ObjectQuery explicit again," and 26 forks.

CodePlex reported almost 106,000 page views and 2,475 software downloads, with 560 people following the project.

So if there's something you don't like about EF, you can now do more than submit a bug report a request a feature -- you can code that feature yourself!

As Scott Guthrie noted in his announcement of the open source move: "Community contributions will also be welcomed, so you can help shape and build Entity Framework into an even better product."

I'd be interested to see how much non-Microsoft code makes it into release software, though. This obviously isn't a weekend project for a hobbyist hacker. I can't imagine many people passing muster and meeting Microsoft's strict coding requirements. As the company states on its "Ways to Contribute" CodePlex page:

Note that 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.

Anyone up to the challenge? I'd love to hear from contributors to the project and share the nuts and bolts of the process with readers (Microsoft lists 13 fairly involved steps to follow in order to contribute code). If you've contributed or tried to, or know someone else who has, please comment here or drop me a line.

Posted by David Ramel on 08/16/2012

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