.NET Core WPF Desktop Bridge - Desktop Shortcuts / Task Bar Shortcuts Bypasses Check For Updates

Question

Where I work one of our apps is a .NET Core WPF application that we switched over to using the desktop bridge recently. We have noticed that if a user creates a desktop shortcut or task bar shortcut for the app using the tile in the start menu and then launches the app from said shortcut, the app skips checking for updates (even though it is specified to check for updates in the .appinstaller file). It also seems that the app does not bother checking for updates in the background after the app is opened, since it remains at the same version after the user restarts it.

Note: The app does update and shows the prompt when launching the app from the start menu via either the live tile or the start menu entry. We have verified that all users and our development machines are all using Windows 10 version 1903.

This is an example of what the appinstaller's template file looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<AppInstaller Uri="{AppInstallerUri}"
              Version="{Version}"
              xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/appinstaller/2018">

  <MainBundle Name="{Name}"
              Version="{Version}"
              Publisher="{Publisher}"
              Uri="{MainPackageUri}"/>

  <UpdateSettings>
    <OnLaunch HoursBetweenUpdateChecks="0" ShowPrompt="true" UpdateBlocksActivation="true"/>
    <AutomaticBackgroundTask/>
    <ForceUpdateFromAnyVersion>true</ForceUpdateFromAnyVersion>
  </UpdateSettings>

</AppInstaller>

I asked about this on MS' MSIX GitHub repo, but they have not responded. At this point, we are wondering if anyone else here has run into this problem and if they were able to determine a workaround or way to solve it? Is there something we need to add to our .appxmanifest file or something else that we missed in the .appinstaller file?

Edit Same question on MSIX forums, where most likely MSFT will reply.

Edit 2

We also received a response from Microsoft regarding this on the Github repo and on the VS Developer Community. They said they are going to look into it. I'll update this again or post an answer from them when they have more information.

https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/msix-docs/issues/59

https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/776276/published-msixappx-does-not-check-for-updates-when.html?childToView=776800#comment-776800

Answer 1

Microsoft was able to respond to our tickets and they let us know that currently, Windows 10 (1903) does not currently support running the updater when you launch an app from a traditional shortcut (Desktop/Taskbar). The recommended workaround is to launch from the start menu or a live tile:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/MSIX-Deployment/Update-process-not-started-lauching-the-program-by-shortcut-or/m-p/902430

https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/msix-docs/issues/59

https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/776276/published-msixappx-does-not-check-for-updates-when.html?childToView=776800#comment-776800

Update:

Tanaka Jimha / Huios was very kind to provide us with a work around using one of the Windows 10 APIs: https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/msix-docs/issues/59#issuecomment-542927336

To use it you will have to reference the usual Windows 10 assemblies, which you can do either manually or via NuGet. You can find documentation how how to do so here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/desktop/modernize/desktop-to-uwp-enhance

Note: If you are using Rider or Resharper, I suggest you update them to 2019.2.3 if you intend to use these assemblies in the same project as your XAML views. Earlier versions have a bug with .NET Core 3.0 WPF apps where the name spaces and classes in the UWP libraries cause weird bugs such as XAML intellisense saying that things like Grid, User Control, Window, Stack Panel, etc are ambiguous.

After you have them added, you can go ahead and start using the API in the Windows.Management.Deployment namespace. Here's some quick and dirty code to show you how to use it, but you can of course experiment and/or refer to Tanaka's example in the link up above:

• To check for updates, you can do something like this:

      public static async Task<bool> CheckForUpdates()
  {
      var currentPackage = Package.Current;
      var status = await currentPackage.CheckUpdateAvailabilityAsync();
      return status.Availability == PackageUpdateAvailability.Required || status.Availability == PackageUpdateAvailability.Available;
  }
  

This will use the URI in your currently installed app's package to see if there are any new versions of it wherever you keep the installer. I should probably point out to keep things sane, you should ensure that the name of the package should stay consistent.

There's a lot of different ways to do that, but one easy way I have found to handle that is to use the AppPackageName element in the project file for the app installer project to ensure that the name of the folders are the same after each publish.

Second, to actually get the update and download and install it, you can do something like this:

public static async Task<bool> GetUpdates(string uriToUse)
{
    try
    {

        var packageManager = new PackageManager();
        var uri = new Uri(uriToUse);
        await packageManager.UpdatePackageAsync(uri, null, DeploymentOptions.ForceApplicationShutdown);
        return true;

    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
        //Log the exception, or do something else, up to you
        return false;
    }
}

The try catch up above is there since UpdatePackageAsync throws an exception if anything stops it from downloading an update. That can be caused by a number of things (I.E. Update is already installed, bad certificate, etc.) That's why you may want to first use CheckUpdateAvailabilityAsync() on the current package before bothering to run an update.

Anyways, hopefully this will prove useful to anyone else who runs into this and Microsoft hasn't released an update for Windows that covers traditional app shortcuts.

Answer 2

About the properties ShowPrompt and ForceUpdateFromAnyVersion, you need to point to this schema - xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/appinstaller/2018" in xaml. And they are available on the 1903 version. So if your version isn't 1903, you can remove these two properties.

Answer 3

Is there any workaround to change http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/appinstaller/2017/2 to http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/appinstaller/2018 ? I know it's a bit off but I dont know how to "update" the version. I have automatic build system and I have update all referenced packages and project's target version to the forced version (min target : win 10 version 1903). The .appinstaller file is going to be generated automatically. Then there is a signing action and publish to azure. The virtual environment is windows-2022. The .appinstaller namespace is always 2017/2 and I don't really know why..