[Question] Microsoft - why do you hate developers?

[Andrew-web-coder]

I have created *.msi installer. Now, I want to distribute it.

1. I can not distribute directly, because I do not have spare thousands of dollars to buy a certificate to sign the code.

2. OK, MS allows to publish on the store ... but not .msi files, because they are required to be signed!

3. OK, I found that you can publish appx/msix packages without singing the code. Would a trillion dollar worth company provide a solution to upload msi file and convert to msix? Apparently, they do not have resources or simply hate poor developers...

4. OK, I found MSIX Packaging tool, ..... but, to my surprise, it generates low quality icons! All my logo images look awful. And Microsoft has not given any option to create package with custom images, because, what, they do not have resources or just simply hate developers?

[Andrew-web-coder]

Even VLC is struggling with the Microsoft - https://twitter.com/videolan/status/1759688788232523788

[charlesroddie]

Why not create an msix directly rather than going via msi?

[Andrew-web-coder]

@charlesroddie Because it's a Tauri app (https://tauri.app/) and Tauri currently doesn't provide appx or msix creation.

[fiza-azmi]

Hi @Andrew-web-coder
I understand that you're trying to publish an MSI installer to Store but are facing issues in the process.

• Trusted signing is a new feature to help with simplifying the signing process.

• When trying to package to MSIX, have you tried packaging your app using Windows Application Project?

• If using the MSIX Packaging tool, you might want to try this , for adding custom assets.

Hope this helps! We would love to hear about your experience with these features.

[Andrew-web-coder]

@fiza-microsoft The overall developer experience was so terrible that I'm giving up on the idea of making useful and free apps.

All you had to do is to allow the msi files to be uploaded and convert them to whatever you want on your side. But apparently that's too much to ask of a company that makes billions of dollars a year.

[RokeJulianLockhart]

#616 (comment)

@charlesroddie, MSIX suffers from the same, unfortunately: #332 (comment)