There's a certain feeling of relief and achievement when we finally launch our application to the Microsoft Store.

Sometimes we need to have a single distribution package as an MSIX, which includes MSIX supported features along with MSI features that are no longer available (such as old drivers).

In the packaging industry, we're used to using application dependencies very often. And with the transition from MSI to MSIX, we have more options to declare and handle them.

MSIX delivered Shared Package Containers to allow applications to share their files and registries, enabling classic Win32 apps to communicate with each other without changing any code.

While for MSIs, this was an optional step, signing your MSIX package is mandatory. Microsoft’s MSIX technology requires the use of code signing certificates to deploy packages.

If there's something we've mentioned over and over again about MSIX is that it requires digital signing. We have a diversity of resources regarding this topic, from why it is a good practice to include a timestamp when signing a package, to automating the whole digital signing process of MSIX Packages.

Announced in 2018, MSIX was presented by Microsoft as the universal package format. Although it may not be widely known, the MSIX technology retains the functionalities for translations and localizations of Universal Windows Platform or UWP Apps.

Many of us are aware of the importance of securing our applications and how digital signatures are a solid way to avoid security breaches. For those looking into MSIX, you must know that Microsoft enforces digital signature for all packages within this technology. There is no exception.

A while ago we released a free tool for APP-V called TweakAPPV at Advanced Installer. Our purpose with this tool was to take App-V 5.x editing from the command-line to a new level by offering full access to the package contents.

“Your package is not digitally signed”.. “The certificate is not installed on your machine”.. “A new package is already installed..”

We all know that MSIX is an evolving technology - but it is not a fix-all for all the situations we encounter when running Windows applications.

Did you package Notepad++ as an MSIX, and need to add extra plugins to it?

Microsoft Visual Studio is the most popular integrated development environment (IDE) among Windows developers. It supports a large variety of programming languages including C, C++, C#, F#, Visual Basic .Net, JavaScript, among others.

It has been almost a year since we started building MSI and MSIX packages for Advanced Installer. The first versions were purely for internal testing and evaluation of potential show stoppers (elevation requirements, virtual machine integrations, etc).

On December 2nd of 2020, MSIX Packaging Fundamentals book authors Tim Mangan, Bogdan Mitrache, and Kevin Kaminski answered a series of questions within the MSIX Packaging Fundamentals Q&A live webinar.

As we've emphasized before, we're big fans of MSIX technology here at Advanced Installer. It has brought more control to developers when it comes to their packages -- as it includes options for repackaging, rolling back updates and even downgrade scenarios.

As software packagers, we know the struggle that comes with new technologies. And there's no need to sugarcoat it -- is downright stressful.

In a previous article we had a look on how Environment Variables work with MSIX. We now know that in MSIX, Environment Variables are redefined as AppExecutionAlias.

Up until 2020, Windows Services were not supported in MSIX -- which represented a blocker for organizations looking to transition their applications (that used Windows Services) to MSIX technology.

In 2018, Microsoft delivered a breakthrough packaging technology to enable a flawless application packaging process, including enhanced features to help IT Pros and Developers carry out updates and customizations in a more reliable way.