Forum Discussion
How to get started today
Amit,
When looking to move your existing apps forward to MSIX, I'd recommend starting with the tooling vendor creating your packages today (if you have one). For example, if you're using the WiX Toolset to create your installation packages, we at FireGiant have created an extension to create .appx packages (and soon MSIX packages when Windows provides full support for MSIX) along with your .msi packages. I expect all the other major packaging vendors will support MSIX as well. If you don't have a vendor already, there are several to choose from (I think this presentation showed them: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/events/build/content/msix-inside-and-out-pptx).
As to your second question, MSIX will allow you deploy directly via SCCM. You can use the Windows Store for Business but it is not a requirement. MSIX deployment is much more like MSI in that way.
Hope that helps.
What if we have a mixture of Win7 & Win10 computers and WinForms & WPF apps. Can MSIX be used to replace ClickOnce and provide the deployment & auto-update for these scenarios? If so, how do we get started reviewing/testing to possibly convert? Thx
You can use the auto updates through App Installer. For more details checkout
1) The build talk MSIX Inside and Out
2) this blog https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/appinstaller/2017/09/27/automated-app-updates-with-appinstaller-file/
3) The documentation for App Installer: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/uwp/schemas/appinstallerschema/schema-root