Relative merits of more specific Azure DevOps pipeline task and more general one

Question

Is there any reason why this:

  - task: DotNetCoreCLI@2
    displayName: Apply EF database migrations
    inputs:
      command: custom
      custom: ef
      arguments: 'database update --project .\MyProject'

is better or worse than

  - task: CmdLine@2
    displayName: Apply EF database migrations
    inputs:
      script: |
        dotnet ef database update --project .\My.Project

They both work and appear to do the same thing. The advantage I see to the latter is that it directly uses the command I run locally to apply migrations that I've generated to the development database on my local machine, without having to break that command into pieces.

Answer 1

Generally, they achieve the same results. For their differences, you may consider the following:

For DotNetCoreCLI@2 Task

• This task is specifically designed for .NET Core CLI commands, making it more intuitive and easier to use for .NET-related operations. And it can provide more detailed logging and error specific to .NET commands.
• In some rare cases, using this task may cause some problems or the actual results may not meet your expectations. For example, NU1100: Unable to resolve Azure DevOps nuget package and Failing unit tests result in obscure error message on CI build / pull request when using DotNetCoreCLI.

For CmdLine@2 Task

• You can run any command as you would in a local terminal. If you already have a script that works locally, you can reuse it without modification, making it simpler and quicker to set up.

• This task is more generic and might not provide the detailed logging for .NET-specific commands compared to DotNetCoreCLI@2 Task.

You can choose a task based on your actual needs and scenarios.