Please include an SxS manifest snippet for reg-free activation

[JesseCol]

The WinAppSDK MSBuild tasks do a great job of assembling the correct manifest xml with all the type activation entries, but this gets tricker when working with a build system that's not MSBuild.

It would be helpful if the WinAppSDK nupkg came with an xml file with all the entries needed for my manifest so I could write my own code to merge it in, for non-MSBuild build systems. Or at least some simple way to generate it.

I do see some manifest files in the nupkg with this info for some components:

manifests\Microsoft.InteractiveExperiences.manifest
manifests\Microsoft.WindowsAppSdk.Foundation.manifest
manifests\manifests\Microsoft.WindowsAppSdk.WinUI.manifest

But it doesn't look like they cover all the APIs, for example, I don't see Microsoft.Windows.Widgets.*.

Thanks!

[DarranRowe]

This is automatable from the Windows App Runtime package manifest. To give an example:

    <Extension Category="windows.activatableClass.inProcessServer" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/manifest/foundation/windows10">
      <InProcessServer>
        <Path>Microsoft.Windows.ApplicationModel.Resources.dll</Path>
        <ActivatableClass ActivatableClassId="Microsoft.Windows.ApplicationModel.Resources.KnownResourceQualifierName" ThreadingModel="both" />
        <ActivatableClass ActivatableClassId="Microsoft.Windows.ApplicationModel.Resources.ResourceCandidate" ThreadingModel="both" />
        <ActivatableClass ActivatableClassId="Microsoft.Windows.ApplicationModel.Resources.ResourceLoader" ThreadingModel="both" />
        <ActivatableClass ActivatableClassId="Microsoft.Windows.ApplicationModel.Resources.ResourceManager" ThreadingModel="both" />
        <ActivatableClass ActivatableClassId="Microsoft.Windows.Globalization.ApplicationLanguages" ThreadingModel="both" />
      </InProcessServer>
    </Extension>

The Path element would correspond to the file element. The ActivatableClass element would correspond to the activatableClass element where the ActivatableClassId attribute would map to the name attribute and the ThreadingModel attribute would map to the threadingModel attribute.

The .msix files are included as part of the Windows App SDK NuGet package. It is therefore possible to write a script to extract the .msix file (a renamed .zip file), parse the AppxManifest.xml file and generate a complete snippet that can then be merged with the main manifest file.

[JesseCol]

Ah, that's a good point, thanks! So it should be straightforward to write a script to pull this from the .msix. I'll leave this open in case the WinAppSDK team wants to support such a script, but if you close this I understand. :)

[DrusTheAxe]

@RDMacLachlan tag you're it :-)

[Scottj1s]

@JesseCol, with the Metapackage Refactor, each component package will provide a fusion manifest fragment. These will all be aggregated up for self-contained deployment, but will also provide a self-describing manifest for non-MSBuild environments.