Forum Discussion
MSIX Packaging Tool access with impending death of Store for Business/Education
With these private stores going away next year, we will need a way to acquire and automate the deployment of the Packaging Tool in offline mode.
Microsoft has options, but none of them seem good for this particular need.
- Pre-built azure images are too noisy for package capture.
- MEM/Intune deployment https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/bg-p/Windows10Blog?emcs_t=S2h8ZW1haWx8dG9waWNfc3Vic2NyaXB0aW9ufEw2WFNPQTdKOFU4VkRWfDM2MDIzNzl8U1VCU0NSSVBUSU9OU3xoSw of the tool similarly provides an environment that is too dirty and noisy.
- Any solution that updates the version (or only allows the latest version of) the MMPT tool is bad (I remember the bad MMPT release last year that took several months to correct).
The requirement is to be able to automate the pre-install the MMPT into an offline wim image, and to deploy that image without AD or AAD join.
3 Replies
- Hi Tim,
Microsoft will soon be launching the new Microsoft Store experience. You can read more about it here:
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2021/06/24/building-a-new-open-microsoft-store-on-windows-11/
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/evolving-the-microsoft-store-for-business-and-education/ba-p/2569423
Hopefully this answers your question for now.- It does not (yet). It is unclear that without using Intune/Mem, there is a way to automate acquisition of a free app that is up in the store. Possibly WinGet will support this, but so far, I have been unable to get a clear answer from the MEM or MSIX team and I'm concerned that the new store won't support this.
I'm hoping to avoid the "oh we didn't think about that" response I might get next Winter!It would seem a natural progression for WinGet to include the MSIX packaging tools as it already caters for the Windows SDK which encompasses some of the Certification apps you can use in conjunction with signing your MSIX packages depending on your environment requirements.
You can do a Winget search MSIX command but it currently mentions that it will be obtain the package from the Microsoft Store. Whereas the Windows ADK that contains AppV 5.1 can be installed. I've logged something in the Feedback Hub as I can't find a way to feedback to the individual insider programs for either WPM or MSIX i'm subscribed to.
