Debug MSIX packaged apps with Advanced Installer

Written by Bogdan Mitrache · May 5th, 2017

Debug your desktop application inside an MSIX app container using the Visual Studio extension from Advanced Installer Professional edition, or higher.

There are two methods to get an MSIX package built and debugged from your current Visual Studio solution:

1. Import the .msix package inside a new Advanced Installer project in our Visual Studio Extension
2. Add an MSIX build as additional output in an existing Advanced Installer MSI project

Import MSIX Package

The import is straightforward, just create a new Advanced Desktop Bridge Project and select your MSIX when prompted. Set the new project as Startup Project, enable debugging by selection your default application, then start debugging your application, as shown in the following video.

To import it in your VS solution please make sure you have first installed the appropriate Visual Studio extension and the latest version of Advanced Installer.

Create New Advanced Installer Project

If you are already using Advanced Installer or our VS extension, creating an MSIX build cannot be simpler. Just go to the MSIX/UWP view in your project and select “Add MSIX/UWP Build”.

For both scenarios, Advanced Installer saves your options in a single project, where you can continue customizing your package. For a step by step introduction, take a closer look at the following tutorial.

Visual Studio Industry Partner

As a Premier partner the Advanced Installer team is working, together with Microsoft, to empower our users with the most easy to use and secure packaging tool.

Read more and download our Visual Studio extension.