Appcenter: Support EXE/MSI Installers for WPF

[adammarks]

Looked at the proposed windows Plan and have feedback https://github.com/Microsoft/appcenter/blob/windows/specs/2019-04/Windows-Plan.md

Describe the solution you'd like
Include support for zipped EXE/MSI installers for WPF

Additional context
In theory MSIX can work on Win7 with this but most customers, beta testers, test machines won't have that.

[patniko]

Hi @adammarks, instead of leaving it up to a feature request we have a PR open right now for comments and discussions. Feel free to request changes or additions to our plan directly. https://github.com/Microsoft/appcenter/pull/193/files

[adammarks]

@patniko Thank you I didn't see the PR, very helpful, I'll close this for now

[winnie]

Hi @adammarks just wanted to let you know we just released distribution, diagnostics, and analytics support for WPF and WinForms apps. Distribution supports including releasing .msi files.

Thanks!

[adammarks]

excellent :+1: We will try uploading msi files. I'm assuming this means that EXE installers are not supported

[adammarks]

I just tried it and we can upload a .EXE installer as long as it is in a .zip file, just like HockeyApp.

Thank you, Excellent work, we can begin migrating to AppCenter! 👍

[NLI-KelbyHunt]

@winnieli1 - Sorry to revive a closed issue, can we not get support for .EXE? I tend to use 7Zip SFX (self extracting archive) to release my software internally. Especially with .NET Core self-contained release, my SFX .EXE archives are amazingly simple.

[adammarks]

I agree with @NLI-KelbyHunt we are successfully uploading .zip's of WPF EXE installers and now everyone is asking why do they need to download then unzip to get the installers. Could this be further simplified to just allow uploading EXEs directly, that would reduce the amount of steps needed before upload and after download.

[winnie]

Thanks for the feedback! I can see why that extra step is not an ideal experience. Due to other priorities at the moment, we don't have immediate plans to add support for EXE but we'll keep this issue open to track interest and prioritize accordingly. Thanks!

[NLI-KelbyHunt]

@winnieli1 - Thanks for the response, if AppCenter ever extends certain sections of its code base to opensource, myself and my company would happily submit a pull request under contribution guidelines. Please consider my voice at least 10 people who are interested in this feature. Thanks!

[msftbot[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had any activity for 60 days. It will be closed if no further activity occurs within 15 days of this comment.

[msftbot[bot]]

This issue will now be closed because it hasn't had any activity for 15 days after stale. Please feel free to open a new issue if you still have a question/issue or suggestion.