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MSIX Hero 1.0.14 – extended CLI and bug-fixes

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Version 1.0.14 of MSIX Hero is now available for download. This version contains the following changes:

New command line verb appattach

Previously, creating VHD files for MSIX app attach was only possible interactively (with help of MSIX Hero UI). In this version, a new command line verb has been added to make it possible to automate this operation.

The new verb appattach has the following sample usage:

MSIXHeroCLI.exe appattach --package "C:\pkgs\MSIX-Hero.msix" --directory "C:\pkgs\VHD\MSIX-Hero" --extractCert --createScripts

Due to some internals, this command requires administrative privileges’. More information about CLI usage can be found in the following documentation page: Command Line Interface (CLI) Reference > Creating VHD for MSIX app attach (appattach)

Resolved issues

  • It was not possible to open .appinstaller files with UTF-8 BOM (Byte-Order-Mark). The issue has been fixed in this version.
  • If property SystemAppId was present in an opened YAML file, its value was lost on re-saving. Note that this value is valid according to the documentation, but returns validation error from winget and Azure pipelines from the official repository. This is why it is hidden in the MSIX Hero UI. Anyway, in this version any value of SystemAppId is preserved if present in the original file.
  • Winget validation (winget validate command) was not executed at the end of YAML export, if no Windows Terminal Preview was installed. In this build, the command is executed even if a standard stable version of terminal is installed.
  • Some APPX/MSIX manifests could not be parsed correctly. The problem was reported for Konica Minolta packages, but could potentially affect some more. In this version, parsing of these specific manifest files has been fixed.
  • Dependencies tab was empty for packages/manifests using older syntax for prerequisites (<Prerequisites />). In this version, the dependencies are shown correctly.
  • Log files in previous version could contained too many log entries for certificate validation. In this version, some verbose logs are not anymore of type INFO but of a more verbose DEBUG level.
  • YamlDotNet was missing in the About window, section Third-party software. It has been added in this version (great package by the way, kudos to contributors)

Download

The app will be updated automatically in a few hours if you installed it from app installer file. New users can download MSIX Hero from the Download page.

Download MSIX Hero (app installer)

Update impact

Last, but not least. Have you already tested how Update impact (a major highlight of version 0.9.0) works? Below is a comparison between MSIX Hero 1.0.5 and MSIX Hero 1.0.14. You can get similar results by exploring the options in the Ribbon > Tools > Update impact analyzer.

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MSIX Hero 1.0.5

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Version 1.0.5 of MSIX Hero is now available for download. This is just a minor bug-fix release.

Improvements

  • Getting packages is now generally faster. Results may vary, but a typical gain of 50% shorter loading time shouldn’t be anything unusual.
  • Pressing CTRL+F when a list of packages, volumes or events is focused moves the focus to the search box.

Resolved issues

  • Some older packages or packages with unexpected namespaces could be falsely reported as malformed (the problem was reported in app KONICA MINOLTA Print Experience but there may be potentially some more apps affected by this). The issue has been fixed in this build.
  • In some cases, unexpected values in the package manifest could cause a crash to desktop when selecting an affected package in the installed package list. The issue has been fixed in this build.
  • The progress bar for loading was not being refreshed during the initial loading of packages. The issue has been fixed in this build.
  • Some specific combination of selection, filter and navigation in the package list could trigger a “ghost” selection, which could result in the multi-selection view being presented, even with only a single package being actually selected. The issue has been fixed in this build.

Download

The app will be updated automatically in a few hours if you installed it from app installer file. New users can download MSIX Hero from the Download page.

Download MSIX Hero (app installer)

Update impact

Last, but not least. Have you already tested how Update impact (a major highlight of version 0.9.0) works? Below is a comparison between MSIX Hero 1.0.0 and MSIX Hero 1.0.5. You can get similar results by exploring the options in the Ribbon > Tools > Update impact analyzer.

Read more →

MSIX Hero 0.9.1

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This is just a minor bug-fix release. It fixes or improves the following reported issues:

  • Added recognition of a few popular regular expression patterns for redirection rules (the display text shown in the PSF tab).
  • Packages having PSF executable launcher in folders other than root (for example VFS/...) were shown as having no redirected target. In this version, such packages show correct redirected paths for entry points. Since the issue has been fixed, packages created by Tim Mangan’s PsfTooling are now displayed properly in MSIX Hero.
  • MSIX Hero is now less strict in terms of the expected file name of the PSF launcher. Previously, only typical names like PsfLauncher.exe, PsfLauncher32.exe etc. were considered. Starting from this version, anything that starts with PsfLauncher* is considered to be a potential entry point for PSF. This enables executable names like PsfLauncher1.exe etc. to be shown with their actual target paths (see screenshot above).
  • Additional minor performance and stability optimizations.

Download

The app will be updated automatically in a few hours if you installed it from app installer file. New users can download MSIX Hero from the Download page.

Download MSIX Hero (app installer)

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MSIX Hero 0.9 – Understand update impacts and more

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A new version of MSIX Hero (0.9) has been released. This build contains new functions and several improvements and fixes to reported issues.

Analyzing update impacts

This new feature lets you compare two packages from the same family (but with different version) and estimate the update impacts. MSIX has an out-of-the-box support for byte-level differencing, which is super handy during updates, where the MSIX source is on a remote location. The MSIX framework is intelligent enough to understand what has actually changed between two versions, and only download the chunks, containing the changed or added content.

With MSIX Hero, you can do a dry-run, and see how much really needs to be re-downloaded. For example, the following picture shows the update impact when updating MSIX Hero from version 0.6 to 0.9:

This means that although the new package contains as much as 67 MB files (25 MB after compression), only 1.9 MB will be downloaded on your computer when executing this particular update path. This is is just around 7.7% of the total package size, a true relief for the msixhero.net server 🙂

You can also use the other tabs to find out about the exact size of added, changed, deleted or unchanged resources, plus an exact list of changed files with their impact on the overall update.

In order to start playing around, press Update impact analyzer in the Tools ribbon and follow the on-screen instructions.

Version 0.9 has a limitation – it can only compare MSIX/APPX packages. Support for bundles will be added later.

Event viewer has been promoted to the main screen

Prior to MSIX Hero 0.9, in order to view MSIX/APPX logs, it was necessary to open a dialog by going to HOME > MSIX event logs.

MSIX Hero Version 8.3

In this new version, the viewer for logs is available directly from the left panel:

MSIX Hero Version 0.9

A few visual changes have been applied:

  • More logs are read at once
  • It is possible to filter the list by using the search box
  • The type of the log is now an icon instead of text
  • Three buttons are displayed in the ribbon to open the system Event viewer with the requested data loaded.

Compact package list now shows architecture instead of the package type

In the compact view, the place of the package type (UWP, Win32 etc.) has been now taken by the architecture (x86, x64 etc). You can still see the old value in the full list view (by dragging the splitter between the list and the sidebar) or in the sidebar.

Left: MSIX Hero 0.8.3. Right: MSIX Hero 0.9.

By the way, it is now possible to sort and group the list by the value of the Architecture column.

Small visual adjustments

There are small visual adjustments in this builds. Most of them are visible in the package list and the ribbon:

  • The background color for contextual tabs changed from green to dark blue:
MSIX Hero 0.8.3
MSIX Hero 0.9
  • Several lines and borders have been removed for some cleaner look and feel:
MSIX Hero 0.8.3
MSIX Hero 0.9.0
  • A button to open Settings has been added at the bottom of the left sidebar.
  • The top bar in the Package Expert window and in the package sidebar is now a bit smaller to allow for more content.

Other changes

  • Some packages with custom namespace prefixes (other than ns or uap) could be read improperly in versions prior to 0.9. This has been fixed in this build.
  • Several operations are now cancellable.
  • A problem with inconsistent tile color in the package list and in the sidebar has been fixed in this build.

Download

The app will be updated automatically in a few hours if you installed it from app installer file. New users can download MSIX Hero from the Download page.

Download MSIX Hero (app installer)

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MSIX Hero 0.8.1 meets winget YAML editor

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A new version of MSIX Hero has been just released. There is a new feature which should be especially interesting for authors and contributors of package manifests in the winget repository (see https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-package-manager-preview/ for more details about winget, and https://github.com/microsoft/winget-pkgs to see the git repository for package manifests).

MSIX Hero has now a pretty complete editor which can create, build and open existing manifests (YAML). It simplifies several tasks which are sometimes tedious, for example:

  • It can read file hashes (from local or remote files) and signature hashes (APPX and MSIX)
  • It can recognize the setup type (exe, Nullsoft, InnoSetup, MSI, MSIX, APPX) and set the properties and metadata information accordingly
  • It validates the data in order to ensure, that the manifest fulfills at least minimum requirements for a package to be accepted in winget repository.
  • If installed on the same machine where winget is available, MSIX Hero fires winget CLI validation for each saved manifest.

In order to get to the winget manifest editor:

  • Press FILE > New > Winget manifest to start from scratch
  • Or, in FILE > Open > Winget manifest (YAML) and pick up any existing manifest to open it for editing
  • Or, in the list of installed MSIX packages highlight a package of your interest and open the editor from the contextual ribbon DEVELOPER > Winget manifest (YAML)
  • Finally, there is also a dedicated button in the EDIT ribbon.

Once there, do not forget to use this button for a quick start.

Choosing an existing installer does the following:

  • Getting name, version and publisher. For MSI sources, they are taken from MSI properties ProductName, ProductVersion and Manufacturer. For MSIX, the package identity is used. For other and executable files, file version info API is used.
  • Calculating installer hash (SHA-256)
  • For APPX and MSIX: Calculating signature hash (SHA-256) – if the package is signed
  • Reading additional properties or extrapolating them from other likely sources. For example, MSIX Hero tries to come with a reasonable value for the copyrights and EULA information, license URL, description etc.
  • For MSIX packages, AppMoniker field is also guessed. In the current implementation, this is just the name of the executable being the target of the manifested application.
  • For EXE packages, the type of the setup can be guessed. Currently the recognition of both NSIS and InnoSetup installers is supported. Other executable setups are reported as generic ones, and the silent command line arguments are left to be filled by the user.
  • Based on the name of the package and its publisher, a proposal for the package identifier is also created. Currently, it is just a concatenation of both values (minus spaces) separated by a dot character.

Here is what will be created if an installer (EXE) compiled with InnoSetup is chosen:

Once the manifest is created, it can be commited and pushed via pull request to this repository:

https://github.com/microsoft/winget-pkgs

Readme document explains, how to contribute and mentions a few additional guidelines to follow before submitting a contribution.

Other changes in version 0.8.1:

  • The status bar has been removed, as it only repeated the information visible already in other places.
  • Minor clean-up and adjustments of size and margins of ribbon tabs
  • The default grouping by publisher has been disabled. You can enable it again by going to the VIEW ribbon tab and selecting the right mode from the gallery.

Download

The app will be updated automatically in a few hours if you installed it from app installer file. New users can download MSIX Hero from the Download page.

Download MSIX Hero (app installer)

Update

It seems that this version may produce a manifest which is not quite accepted by pipelines running after opening pull requests. The problem is caused by documented property ManifestVersion. In order to mitigate this issue on pipeline side, an update has been made that disables editing of manifest version. See more information about updated version here:

News / Release / MSIX Hero 0.8.3

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MSIX Hero 0.7.1.0

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A new version of MSIX Hero is there. This is just a minor update that fixes a bug reported by @BogdanMitrache, where packages having both a definition stored in PSF file config.json AND the Advanced Installer‘s executable wrapper AiStub.exe and/or AiStubElevated.exe were not showing a correctly resolved target path. This version fixes the issue.

Download

The app will be updated automatically in a few hours if you installed it from app installer file. New users can download MSIX Hero from the Download page.

Download MSIX Hero (app installer)
Read more →

MSIX Hero 0.7.0 lets you manage APPX volumes

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A new version of MSIX Hero is there. The big highlight feature of this build is the support for AppxVolumes, but there are also a few smaller improvements and bug fixes, making this a highly recommended update.

Volume manager

By default, all APPX/MSIX installations happen in C:\Program Files\WindowsApps. This directory actually corresponds to the default volume configured on the target machine. The management of volumes is now implemented in MSIX Hero. Version 0.7 can list, add, remove volumes and also mount/dismount them. You can also set the default volume so that your apps will be always installed where you expect them to be present.

All of these new functions are present in a new tab which has been added in the sidebar (the first one being for packages, and the third one containing the system overview, as desribed in the release notes for version 0.6).

All currently available APPX volumes are visible (both mounted and dismounted). On most of machines, there is just one entry by default (the one marked with a green checkmark).

The ribbon for volumes has a new button which opens the New volume dialog:

You can select the target drive and optionally an absolute folder path (standard is \WindowsApps, but this can be changed to whatever you like). Additionally, there is a checkbox for marking the new volume as the default one. Bear in mind, that every partition/disk can the host of maximum one volume, and this is why some disk letters may not be available in this dialog.

The context menu and the contextual ribbon for every volume has the following options:

The availability of them depends on the volume state, for example you cannot remove or dismount a volume that is currently your default one.

Moving packages between volumes

Setting up the default volume ensures that all future package installations will be automatically saved there. What about changing the installation path of an already installed app?

To move an app, go to the Packages tab and select the package to be moved. Its contextual tab should have a new button Change volume…

Pressing it opens another dialog, where the desired volume can be changed.

Note: On a standard machine with no extra options, there is usually just a single volume available. At least one additional volume has to be created in order to move any package.

Package integrity settings

For packages that support it, the integrity settings are now parsed and displayed in the package sidebar / window:

More information about Package Integrity Enforcement: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/msix/package/signing-package-overview#package-integrity-enforcement

Other changes

  • There is now an extra confirmation window shown before removing a package. The dialog can be disabled in MSIX Hero settings in order to bring back the old behavior (immediate removal).
  • Minor changes in the ordering of buttons in contextual Manage tab for the packages – the button to run the package has been moved and is now shown at the first position.
  • There was a typo in the name of the Home and work networks. The issue is now fixed.
  • The link to open a new folder after creating a modifiction package stub was broken. This issue is now fixed.

Download

The app will be updated automatically in few hours if you installed it from app installer file. New users can download MSIX Hero from the Download page.

Download MSIX Hero (app installer)

Your feedback is important, let me which other features you would like to see in MSIX Hero.

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