Version 2004 cannot uninstall an app-in-development that I installed in Version 1909.

Question

I'm developing a UWP app. I successfully installed it under Windows 10 Version 1909. I have uninstalled and reinstalled multiple times during development, testing, and debugging. After upgrading to Version 2004, I can no longer uninstall it -- either through the usual Settings panel or even through an elevated PowerShell.

From PowerShell, as Administrator:

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-AppxPackage MyApp | Remove-AppxPackage
Remove-AppxPackage : Deployment failed with HRESULT: 0x80080204, The Appx package's manifest is invalid.
error 0x80080204: App manifest validation error: Line 71, Column 6, Reason: The element specified requires
"unvirtualizedResources" capability.

The manifest did not specify any "unvirtualizedResources" capability. Moreover, https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/packaging/app-capability-declarations recommends against it.

In any case, I'm not trying to deploy it, I'm trying to remove it.

Answer 1

In the AppxManifest.xml file, I incremented the Identity Version from "5.0.0.0" to "5.0.0.1", and then the system recognized the new installation as an "update" and replaced the old build (rather than create a different app), even though it would not let me explicitly uninstall it previously.

Moreover, I can now once again explicitly uninstall and reinstall without incrementing the version -- as I could before -- even though I made no other change to the manifest file, and it was supposedly a manifest-file error that originally prevented me from uninstalling the old build.