Convert Your Web Application Into UWP App
Numbers Ventors
You can also use the installerless mode, just put everything (your app and jre) in a folder, create an exe which will call your java program, create your manifest and call makepappx. Everything is in the documentation. And the process is very similar to deploy java applications to Mac Store.
Due to the lack of information out there about packing Java applications for Windows Store, I created an simple skeleton using a demo app bundled in the JDK called SwingSet to ease a lot the process. Please check it: _bridge_java and contribute with your own needs to have a good starting point.
The installer part would be easy but those are just wrappers around the JRE. The problem is that the JRE (the actual VM) is too complex for UWP and uses a lot of low level API's that just can't be ported.
The only way I know of getting Java apps onto UWP is Codename One which is an open source project and a commercial entity (and my employer). Notice you will need to adapt your code to use the Codename One API which is inspired by Swing but quite different (and better).
If you already have an installer for you application you can use MSIX Packaging Tool to repackage it into MSIX format. You can run your desktop application installers through this tool and obtain an MSIX package that you can install on your machine or upload to the Microsoft Store.
With the Desktop App Converter, a number of important improvements are being made to the Windows platform for all developers. First, you can convert existing Windows desktop apps or games to Universal Windows Platform (UWP) packages so your users will be able to install them easily and experience seamless updates. Once converted to the UWP application model, the desktop app has access to new UWP APIs which previously were inaccessible to desktop apps, such as Live Tiles and push notifications.
You can set the packaging project as the start-up project and hit F5 to start the debugger. The desktop app project will build, followed by the packaging project copying the artifacts from the build output and launching the debugger on the updated UWP app package.
Check out this MSDN article Dev Center article for more detail on how you can leverage this workflow. We would love to hear your feedback on how we can make your experience of brining your Win32/.NET application to the Universal Windows Store even better.
The Desktop Bridge brings a number of important improvements to the Windows platform for all developers. First, you can convert existing Windows desktop apps or games to .appx packages, so your users will be able to install them easily and experience seamless updates, be it through the Windows Store or any distribution channel of your choice.
Once you have successfully converted your desktop app (either with the Desktop App Converter or manually), you are ready to deploy, test and enhance your app. Now that your app is in the UWP app model and has an .appx package, the methods for doing this are the same as for any UWP app. Check out our Deploy and Debug documentation for detailed steps on side-loading and debugging. Note that your converted app may need some code changes in some cases. Be sure to read the Preparing Your Desktop App for Conversion to UWP topic on the Windows Dev Center.
You can now iterate on your code and start enhancing your app with exciting new UWP features that were previously not available to desktop apps. Add background tasks and app services. Add a UWP process to your package to host a UWP XAML UI frontend, and so much more. We will continue to update the Desktop Bridge sample repo on GitHub to demonstrate many of these great UWP features consumed by converted desktop applications, as we are getting closer to the final release of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update.
The Desktop Bridge offers an exciting path to migrate your existing desktop apps to UWP. It enables you to gradually move across the bridge at your own pace while keeping your existing code investments running at all times along the way.
The Desktop Bridge release has been made possible also thanks to the release of the Anniversary Update: the last Windows 10 update, in fact, contains, under the hood, all the technology needed by Win32 application to run inside the Universal Windows Platform container. The Desktop Bridge was officially launched on 14th September 2016, together with many announcements.
Starting from 14th September, you can actually download from the Store real desktop apps and not just native Universal Windows Platform apps. Up to today, there are more than 40 converted apps available on the Store, including some very popular names like Evernote, Kodi, Open Live Writer and Arduino IDE. You can check a collection of some of the most popular converted apps here: -us/store/collections/fullsoftwareapplications/pc
Previously, the Desktop App Converter was available only as a regular download and based on a Powershell script, which you needed to maintain updated over time. Now, instead, the tool is available directly on the Store and you can install directly from the following link . This is the best way to get tool since, every time the Desktop Bridge team will push an update, you will automatically get it, as it happens for every apps that you can download today from the Store.
On the market there are many popular tools used by developers to create installers for their desktop applications, like InstallShield , Wix or Advanced Installer . All the latest versions of these products are now capable of exporting the installer not just using the traditional formats, like EXE or MSI, but also directly using the AppX model.
This is a very common question I receive when I speak or write about this technology: my desktop app works just fine, why should I be interested into porting it to the Universal Windows Platform using the Desktop Bridge? Additionally, we know that the Universal Windows Platform is a new framework that ensure a much better deployment and security model than traditional apps, thanks to its sandbox, but it also means that sometimes it can make things more complicated when it comes to deal with some scenarios that we often have to handle in an enterprise environment.
One important concept to highlight is that, at the moment, not every developer is allowed to submit desktop apps on the Store, but they need first to get approval by Microsoft. The main reasons for this requirement are:
The code for this sample app, as well as the code for each of the steps along the journey across the bridge, can be found in our sample repo on GitHub. As we gradually migrate our app, it remains fully functional every step of the way and picks up additional features that will help keep users engaged.
As a first step to get our app on the bridge, we take it through the conversion process. There are a couple of options to do this initial step. For a simple app like this, which gets installed just by copying binaries, we can quickly perform a manual conversion as explained in this article on Dev Center and demonstrated in this sample on GitHub. Apps that are using a .MSI (or similar) installer should use the Desktop App Converter for the conversion process. Finally, there are several third party install tool providers who are in the process of adding support for the Desktop Bridge to UWP in their products, as well, such as Advanced Installer, FireGiantand InstallShield.
Once the conversion is complete, we want to test, adjust, and enhance our application in Visual Studio. For that, we can take advantage of the project type for UWP packaging, which the Visual Studio team recently introduced for Visual Studio 15 Preview 2 (see this post for details and instructions).
Now we can hit F5 and debug our application running within the UWP app model. With the conversion, a number of immediate platform benefits become available automatically, such as Start menu integration, clean install/update/uninstall, and distribution of the .appx package via your choice of distribution.
In addition to calling more UWP APIs, we can now also add UWP components to our app package to take advantage of other exciting UWP features. Examples of this include adding App Services, becoming a sharing target or a file picker, or adding background tasks.
In the final step, we will now expand the reach of our application to all Windows 10 devices that run UWP apps by moving the last remaining pieces of code into the UWP app container process. To do so, we will replace the registry-based state with the UWP-compliant ApplicationData API. Thus, we can now deploy our app to phones, Xbox One, HoloLens and other Windows devices that run UWP apps.
With Windows 10's Anniversary Update, Microsoft is making it possible for developers to convert traditional Windows desktop applications to Universal Windows Platform (UWP) applications. But anyone can do this with any app--not just developers.
With Windows 10's converter, just give it a .msi or .exe file and it'll spit out a .appx package. You can then sideload this app on your own PC, or--if you're the application's developer--you can submit the resulting UWP app to the Windows Store. This feature will arrive for everyone with Windows 10's Anniversary Update, bringing many "legacy" applications to the Windows Store.
This feature is the end result of Microsoft's Project Centennial, which is designed to bring those "legacy" Win32 and .NET Windows desktop applications to the Windows Store and the new Universal Windows Platform.
You might wonder why anyone would want to convert a desktop application to a new UWP app. For one thing, only UWP apps are allowed in the Windows Store. This allows developers to get a lot more eyes on their apps, not to mention single-click installation, easy purchasing, and automatic updates.
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