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Long time reader, first time writer:

I'm trying to move my WPF-App to UWP, as a first addition I would like to include an in-app help reader that will be built in UWP.

I packed my app with the centennial VisualStudio extension, and it works nicely.

For the help reader I've added an empty Universal Windows App Project to the solution. I plan to activate the project with a custom url scheme (protocol activation).

But in the process of starting the UWP app it crashes. It can not load the MainPage.xaml file, I think. I'm starting it from WPF with Process.Start("app1-help://showhelp");.

In the AppxManifest I've added:

 <uap:Extension Category="windows.protocol" 
      Executable="App1.exe" EntryPoint="App1.App">
     <uap:Protocol Name="app1-help"></uap:Protocol>
 </uap:Extension>

My question is: What do I need to include from the build output of the UWP App in the appx package? Currently I only add the App1.exe file.

The output folder contains more then 100 files, most of them dotNETcore dlls. I don't really understand yet how all the files work together to create a white-"hello world" window:

app1.xr.xml
vs.appxrecipe
resources.pri
Microsoft.*.dll
System.*.dll
clrjit.dll
clrcompression.dll
WinMetadata/Windows.winmd
Properties/Default.rd.xml
entrypoint/App1.exe

A pointer to some explanations of what all these files do, and which ones I need to package in the centennial appx would be really awesome.

Thank you in advance for any help.

Stefan Wick MSFT
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marv51
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  • You need to include all .dll files that are not registered in the GAC and any other resources your application might. The VS2017 project should take care of adding these to the AppXPackageFileList.xml file every time you build: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/appconsult/2016/10/28/desktop-bridge-manually-converting-a-desktop-application/ – mm8 Feb 26 '17 at 12:48
  • I built my AppXPackageFileList.xml file by hand. VS2017 does not change that file, and I have not found any reference that it should. (Including the article you linked to). I thought one of the advantages of UWP is that the GAC is no longer used? – marv51 Feb 27 '17 at 09:24

1 Answers1

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If you are planning to include a UWP component to your solution, you can use that project as the "packaging" project, and then add the output from the WPF project.

In the desktop bridge samples repo, you will find several options to integrate WPF and UWP. And this post explain those in more detail.

rido
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