How to build a Non-Store, Non-MSIX Desktop app using Windows SDK WinUI 3

Gregory Bologna 56 Reputation points
2021-08-25T23:46:13.257+00:00

I built a UWP app that I publish and deploy to about 70 Windows 10 users. It works fine, except I can’t walk around to every user when I update the app, so I created a new build with Enable Automatic Updates. The problem is my company recently disabled Microsoft Store. The app fails with access denied when I run the .appinstaller.
I would like to re-develop this as a non-store, non-msix, single desktop app
using WinUI 3. I don’t want MS Store ANYTHING! I have my environment setup with Windows SDK 3 1.0.0 experimental version, but I can’t find out how to make this happen. I read a dated article that this feature is in the works for WinUI 3, but it’s still vague to me.

Windows App SDK
Windows App SDK
A set of Microsoft open-source libraries, frameworks, components, and tools to be used in apps to access Windows platform functionality on many versions of Windows. Previously known as Project Reunion.
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  1. Gregory Bologna 56 Reputation points
    2021-08-26T13:36:16.347+00:00

    Thanks, but I had to remove accepted answer because the tutorial exercise does not work. Getting errors like

    "System.DllNotFoundException: 'Unable to load DLL 'Microsoft.WindowsAppSDK.Bootstrap.dll' or one of its dependencies: The specified module could not be found. (0x8007007E)'".

    The author needs to fix the sample code, or the tutorial should be pulled.