General Noobie Questions about MSIX Packaging Tool

Question

I am an independent developer and a complete noob to MSIX.

I have a WPF application that I want to put on Microsoft Store, and I am trying to navigate my way through the MS requirements including packaging. I have read about preparing my app prior to packaging. I find the whole process to be confusing.

My development environment is on a single Windows 10 Pro machine with a wifi internet connection and Visual Studio Community Edition.

At first, I thought I needed an Azure account with a virtual machine created to run Window 10 S. Big mistake! I thought the vm was part of the freebies included with the account. I created the vm, with nothing running on it, and then was rewarded with an invoice for over $100 with a promise from Microsoft that I was going to receive more invoices. I have disabled my Azure subscription (you can't delete it) with the hopes that disabling it will stop the bleeding of money.

Then I read somewhere that I can enable a computer in Windows 10 S mode and run my app on that computer to test if it is compatible with the Store.

But before doing that, I discovered Hyper-V. So I enabled Hyper-V and created a vm with a trial version of Windows Enterprise edition. Now, I don't want another rude surprise invoice from Microsoft, so I deleted that vm.

So now I am back to considering using Windows 10 S mode on an extra laptop that I have laying around my office somewhere. But before doing that, I decided to log in to this forum to get some feedback from developers who have gone down this path before.

So my question is, "How do individual developers do this without taking out a bank loan?".

Answer 1

Hi @R Evans ,

Thanks for the question, I totally understand where your coming from. I'll leave my two cents below but feel free to comment back on this answer if you have more questions.

**1. You can use the MSIX Packaging Tool to package your application locally on your Dev Machine. I've used it to package up a ClickOnce Installer for a .NET Application. What type of build artifact are you trying to package? (Runtime, Framework, ..) For more on the packaging process see here. **

2. If your trying to test the installation of your app post packaging you can use that extra laptop laying around your office, setup a VM in Azure as you did, or setup a VM on your dev machine locally. Below are tips for each:

• I know you had a bad experience with Azure but the flexibility of an Azure VM is really appealing for this type of work. What I would do is create a low end VM in Azure, RDP into it, and then deploy the MSIX package on it. You can then test your application on a VM with specific specs and once your done just remember to delete the VM and is corresponding resources. With a new azure account you get $200 to play around with and if you spun this up, tested your app, and took it down the costs would be minimal (assuming you select an appropriate VM).
• If you don't want to use Azure your second option would be to setup a VM locally on your PC. You could use a simple virtualization product like VirtualBox to prevision a VM locally on your PC, install Windows, and then install your app package to test. The disadvantage of this is you would have a Windows 10 license to install the OS on your local VM. This is a benefit of Azure as the OS license is bundled into the cost of the subscription.
• Your last option would be to use the extra laptop you mentioned. To use this you would create an app installer file and then publish the app to your extra laptop using FTP or by setting up a UNC share over your local network. For more see this here.

I hope this helps you understand your options and gets you going, thanks for developing an app for the Microsoft Store :)