Customizing Visual Studio MSIX packaging project output

Question

I'm using a Visual Studio MSIX packaging project to create an installer on a network share for an internal application.

One problem is that it's creating a directory with "_Test" at the end.

Why is it doing that and how do I get rid of it? I just want "MyApp.MSIX_0.0.1.0", or ideally, "MyApp.0.0.1.0".

 Directory of I:\

08/14/2020  09:44 AM    <DIR>          .
08/14/2020  09:44 AM    <DIR>          ..
08/14/2020  09:44 AM            21,312 index.html
08/14/2020  09:23 AM               601 MyApp.MSIX.appinstaller
08/14/2020  09:37 AM    <DIR>          MyApp.MSIX_0.0.1.0_Test
               2 File(s)         21,913 bytes
               3 Dir(s)  62,444,621,824 bytes free

I've been scouring the documentation, but I can't find anything about the directories it creates or the index.html file it generates. I'd like to customize all that, add release notes, etc.

This is a WPF app, if that makes any difference.

Rida

Answer 1

I am just placing here a copy of the original answer from MSFT:

The output directory of the packages is defined in the Microsoft.AppxPackage.Targets file at C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Enterprise\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v16.0\AppxPackage (depending on your version of Visual Studio).

If you want to remove the "_Test" suffix you can modify the lines defining the output directory. In my file it was around line 3190 - 3196:

To modify the output html file, modify the index.template.html file in the "Landing" subdirectory - C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Enterprise\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v16.0\AppxPackage\Landing (depending on VS version).

Littoral

This works on a developer machine. How do I fix it when deploying from Azure DevOps? – Omen

For Visual Studio 2022 Community the path is C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\Msbuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v17.0\AppxPackage – Undervest

GIven that this is hard-coded in this system-wide file, I am just going to use a script to rename these after they are packaged. – Fording

Answer 2

If you are using Azure Pipelines to deploy, you can add parameters to the MSBuild task to do this. For example:

Hardcoded:

task: MSBuild@1
    displayName: MSBuild
    inputs:
      solution: '**/*.sln'
      platform: 'x64'
      configuration: 'Release'
      msbuildArguments: '/p:OutDir=$(Build.BinariesDirectory)/    
/p:AppxPackageTestDir="$(Build.BinariesDirectory)/MyApp.Installer/AppPackages/MyApp_1.0.0/"'

or using pipeline variables:

msbuildArguments: 
 /p:OutDir=$(Build.BinariesDirectory)/
/p:AppxPackageTestDir="$(Build.BinariesDirectory)/MyApp.Installer/AppPackages/$(packageName)_$(newVersion)/"

This gives a folder called "MyApp_1.0.0" instead of the confusing "MyApp_1.0.0_Test".

And the Uri property inside the .appinstaller file will correctly point to this folder.

Omen

Very helpful! If you also want to edit the name of the file itself, you can use AppxPackageName. For example: dotnet publish <UNRELATED ARGUMENTS...> /p:AppxPackageTestDir="bin/Blah/net6.0-windows10.0.19041.0/win10-x64/AppPackages/MyApp_latest/" /p:AppxPackageName="MyApp_latest" (If it matters, I ran this with dotnet publish in Github Actions instead of msbuild/Azure Pipelines, as in the answer above) – Hideandseek

Answer 3

For 2022 Professional, the file is: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Professional\Msbuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v17.0\AppxPackage\Microsoft.AppxPackage.Targets

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