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Shashank450's avatar
Shashank450
Copper Contributor
Jun 09, 2020
Solved

MSIX - Permissions to App Folder?

I have an application which creates a log file in the application install directory (e.g. C:\Program Files\xyz\) upon shortcut launch. This can achieved well by granting permissions to the folder xyz...
MSIX Permissions
  • marcinotorowski's avatar
    marcinotorowski
    Jun 09, 2020

    This is a classic challenge where PSF (Package Support Framework) can help you, more specifically one of its fixups called File Redirection:

    https://github.com/Microsoft/MSIX-PackageSupportFramework/tree/master/fixups/FileRedirectionFixup

     

    You cannot set the permissions though, the MSIX has a built-in tamper protection, and prevents you from changing anything in the install directory. Instead, what PSF does for you is to redirect these calls to a place where there is a write grant (a special folder in local app data), and ensures that there is a transparent redirection on subsequent calls.

     

    Some basic regular expression knowledge may be required to achieve the desired results (depending on the pattern for the files to be redirected). A step-by-step instruction is here:

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/msix/psf/package-support-framework

     

    Depending on the tooling you use, the support for PSF runtime from GUI may be also there, most of key players have already implemented it either way.