Database.Migrate() creating database but not tables, EF & .NET Core 2

Another classic case of struggling with something for a day or two only to find the answer half an hour after posting a question here. Posting my solution incase other people have had a similar issue.

TLDR - _dbContext.Database.Migrate(); doesn't create migrations.

Basically, dbContext.Database.EnsureCreated() doesn't care about migrations, which is why it generated the full database inc tables (however then of course you can't migrate).

_dbContext.Database.Migrate(); applies the migrations and creates the database if it doesn't exist however it doesn't create the tables if there's no migration.

Basically I have a project as a resource, I was trying to duplicate the project from a new application generated by the user but as I'd never run any migrations in the resource project there was nothing to migrate. Running the Add-Migration Initial in the PMC in the resource project gave the project it's initial migration files so then when I ran migrate on a new database it knew which tables to create.

In my case I had multiple projects and DesignTimeDbContextFactory was pointing to a MigrationsAssembly but in startup sqlOptions were not.

so when DI creates DbContext it does't know there are pending migrations.

you can check you pending migrations with dbContext.Database.GetPendingMigrations(); before Migrate(); to check if it has found migrations or not

Solution is add migration MigrationsAssembly in sqlOptions

 services.AddDbContext<BM_OCR_DbContext>(options =>
                {
                    options.UseSqlServer(
                    Configuration.GetConnectionString("DefaultConnection"),
                    sqlServer => sqlServer.MigrationsAssembly("BM.OCR.Server"));
                });