Building amazing multi-platform solutions for iOS, Android, Mac, Linux and Windows
As we get progressively closer to the v1 release of the Windows App Sdk I thought it worth looking into the different deployment/packaging options you have. In this post we’re going to look at the startup logic for a WinUI 3 Desktop application and discuss how this relates to the different packaging options that are … Read more
One of the most annoying “features” of both UWP and WinUI/ProjectReunion WindowsAppSDK apps is the need to generate a package. With UWP development, the packaging was built into the UWP project. However, with the WindowsAppSDK, a separate packaging project is currently required. In this post we’re going to walk through how you can remove this … Read more
If you’re a developer that builds apps using .NET for Windows you’ll be familiar with Microsoft’s attempts to deliver a better developer story. Unfortunately this usually involves learning a new, typically under-baked, technology that in theory will make it easy to deliver better apps for Windows. Whether this was the jump from WinForms to WPF … Read more
In my previous post I made a passing reference to the use of sparse packages to allow unpackaged Windows applications to acquire an identity. In this post we’re going to walk through creating a sparse package and attaching it to an unpackaged Windows application. Before we get into it I want to link to a … Read more
Here’s a quick fix for an error I came across when I’ve been experimenting with various packaging options for WPF (Win32) applications. To set the scene I have a new application, PackagingWPF, that I created based on the WPF Application project template. At this stage I’m not even going to both modifying the application. Next … Read more
This week I’ve been looking further into where WinUI3 is at and specifically how it relates to both Win32 and UWP applications. Along this journey I ran into a slight issue with WinUI3 for Desktop application that simply wouldn’t run if I published and then installed the package. In this post I’m going to walk … Read more
The Windows platform supports a number of different development frameworks (WinForms, WPF, UWP etc) and a number of different deployment models (xcopy, appx, msix etc). In this post we’re going to take a look at why the current trend for packaging Windows applications is a stop-gap, a temporary solution to the problem of application management … Read more
A feature that was added to .NET Core apps was the ability to publish as a single file. As we approach the release of .NET 5 I thought it worthwhile taking a look at the options for publishing Windows Forms and WPF applications with dotnet publish. For this post we’re going to work with a … Read more