
Putting my VB6 Windows Apps in the Windows 10 Store - LyalinDotCom
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/PuttingMyVB6WindowsAppsInTheWindows10StoreProjectCentennial.aspx
======
cannam
I set out to try the Desktop App Converter with some of my own apps the other
day, on a laptop that had just been updated with the Windows 10 Anniversary
Update. Trouble was, the laptop had Windows 10 Home Edition on it and the
Desktop App Converter won't run on that. Or so I deduced after chasing an
obscure error message awhile.

This seems to be because the converter needs virtualisation support, which
isn't included in the Home edition. But it wasn't clear to me whether a £100
upgrade to Win10 Pro would be enough to permit me to run it, or whether I'd
need to have Win10 Enterprise which doesn't seem (?) to be a thing a person
can just go out and buy.

(Something very 90s about all this worrying about the base OS licence level
stuff.)

~~~
skrebbel
I agree that this is completely nuts.

FWIW i found a much cheaper pro license (around €40, iirc) by using some
product comparison sites. Basically, even though it's 2016 you can actually
buy software from webshops the way you'd order hardware or shoes, and many of
these shops also sell Windows 10 Pro licenses. Somehow, they're often much
cheaper than what MS sells in their own store. Completely nuts if you ask me,
but ok. All you get after you pay is a text file with a license code, but
that's also all you need.

I still think it's insane that MS, who so badly want developers to come back
to their platform, force you to be on Pro for a lot of useful stuff (including
running the WinPhone emulator (!)). This disqualifies nearly all nice laptops
you can buy at a good price point, unless you subsequently go through the
trouble of manually finding, buying, and entering a Pro license like I did.

If anyone from MSFT is reading this: fix this! I can't walk into a store, buy
some nice cheap Asus convertible, and just start coding Windows Mobile apps,
and that's stupid. Your OS is getting better again, WSL is promising, we all
love how badass you've been with cross platform .NET and VS Code and getting
Node.JS to work great on Windows, but you're really scaring people away here.

~~~
jasonkostempski
"Your OS is getting better again"

Literally the first time I've heard someone say that about the recent state of
Windows outside of Microsoft PR.

~~~
skrebbel
I assume you're surrounded by people who don't use Windows? Not meant as a
snark - most people I know use Windows and they all think 10 is the best one
yet, except a few who're (rightfully) angry about the telemetry stuff.

Personally, for me it's just Windows 7 with better looks and great touch
screen support. I know no better OS with decent touch screen support. I really
like using the touch screen. You Macbook people don't know what you're missing
(but I guess that OLED touch-bar thing is going to get you halfway there,
pretty cool).

My laptop is basically an iPad Pro but with a much more powerful OS (for stuff
like development, especially).

~~~
jasonkostempski
Maybe general consumer opinion is that it doesn't suck as much as Windows 8. I
was only considering what I've heard for people in IT. I make a living working
on the MS stack and I agree it's a pleasant platform for development, but only
for the MS stack. It's inferior for development of just about everything else.
I now run Windows in a VM, I don't want it anywhere near my personal things.
It's not specifically the telemetry that's so appalling, I expect typical
software companies to include it, and I can even forgive it being on by
default. It's the fact that users are _not allowed_ to, along with a huge
selection of other "features", disable or remove it. Windows is becoming more
like iOS, not less, it will eventually leave you just as powerless if it
hasn't already.

------
withinrafael
Some nits:

    
    
      * Signing packages is not necessary for normal Store distribution. Skip this step.
      * Devs must work with Microsoft to get their Centennial apps in the Store right now, it's not a free for all
      * There's a swath of users that can't use Centennial apps right now due to a bug that will bugcheck the box.
    

General Centennial app take-aways:

    
    
      * Package Win32 apps and throw them in the Store
      * You get package update, flighting, analytics and feedback hub integration for free
      * Clean install/uninstall due to virtualized file-system/registry writes

~~~
Hondor
Good news about signing. I suppose the store itself somehow signs things? Code
signing certificates are prohibitively expensive for small developers at
around $500.

~~~
withinrafael
You upload an .appx with an associated unique identity (allocated via the
Windows Dev Center) and Microsoft manages the signing and such on their end.

~~~
garganzol
And you give 30% cut from revenue. Nice played.

------
laurentdc
All this is fascinating though. We're talking 18+ years of binary
compatibility.

Microsoft sure knows how to keep the cash flowing.

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
Uuuuhhhh. There are plenty of games that came out even 10 years ago that
ostensibly have the "Designed for Windows XP" (even Vista) badges but that
which refuse to run on Windows 10. Often it's to do with how they do graphics,
which is a shame, because sandboxing like this is a great way to allow
graphics to be shimmed.

~~~
int_19h
Games have always suffered the most from back-compat, usually because they
were the ones most prone to using hacks to speed things up. Remember how many
things stopped working during the XP migration, because they expected the OS
to get out of their way, like 9x did?

FWIW, there are some counterexamples. There is a turn-based strategy game
(think Master of Magic meets H&MM) called Age of Wonders, that originally
shipped in 1999, targeting Win95/98 and WinNT 4.0 - a rare case, that, most
games from that era didn't even bother with NT. I still play it regularly, and
the amazing part is how it not just works on Win10 machines today, but works
amazingly well. For example, it can handle pretty much any random resolution
(including tablets in portrait mode and other weird corner cases), and it
actually scales its UI up and down accordingly.

The most interesting part is that it does do things that were normal back then
but which are no-no now, like putting savegames directly into its install
folder, or saving settings under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. But because they did them
in a straighforward, non-hackish way, things like Vista's and later registry
and FS redirection all work great, and the game doesn't even notice it at all.

I bet it could be easily packaged into the Store, if they wanted to.

~~~
lmm
> targeting Win95/98 and WinNT 4.0 - a rare case, that, most games from that
> era didn't even bother with NT. I still play it regularly, and the amazing
> part is how it not just works on Win10 machines today, but works amazingly
> well

These two things are not unrelated. Windows from 2k onwards has been based on
the NT line (I remember Windows 7 is internally NT 6.1, I imagine 10 is
similar).

------
jepler
.. and it requires a capability not currently documented by microsoft(!)
[https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/windows/apps/br2114...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/windows/apps/br211423.aspx) called "runFullTrust"; which is
displayed with an explanation that will be as clear as mud for a user:
"Capabilities: • runs full trust mode". Elsewhere in the document, it was
stated that only registry and one folder are redirected. So do these apps do
away with the beneficial parts of sandboxing that the windows store was
supposed to be good for?

~~~
withinrafael
Yes, hence requiring "full trust".

Right now, apps are manually reviewed by Microsoft to mitigate abuse. How this
works in the open-for-all configuration has yet to be seen.

You can see some of the nuances of full trust apps via
[https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/uwp/porting/desktop...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/uwp/porting/desktop-to-uwp-root) .

------
cptskippy
I wonder if someone will publish a FoxPro app.

------
oridecon
Is there a way to confirm app publishers are who they say they are?

Once it's available for everybody, what's stopping people from uploading
things they don't own?

~~~
withinrafael
Right now, it requires manual approval and paperwork/signatures. It's not
clear if this will change, as solving the problem you brought up doesn't seem
possible.

~~~
mkup
It can be some system bound to domain names of software developers/vendors
(like Let's Encrypt, but for code signing instead of TLS).

------
2-m3m3n70
I can't find any documentation on it - does anyone know how auto-updates are
handled? Do you just release a new version and hope for the best or is there
some sort of mechanism to force people to update?

~~~
withinrafael
Updates are submitted to the Windows Store, just as you would with any other
Store app. After approval, they can be configured to trickle out and/or force
install (when available). More information can be found at
[https://msdn.microsoft.com/windows/uwp/publish/upload-app-
pa...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/windows/uwp/publish/upload-app-packages)

You can also create a "flight group" consisting of your test team and only
push out more broadly when your internal QA passes. Check out
[https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/uwp/publish/package...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/uwp/publish/package-flights) for details.

------
benguild
I love that VB6 is still alive!

------
garganzol
The amount of Redmond's astroturfing is ridiculous. One cannot even install
one's appx on one's own machine unless one signs it with a real certificate.
Even Sinclair ZX80 could do that. Appx cannot.

~~~
MLR
You have to toggle your machine to developer mode first, but you absolutely
can.

------
rasz_pl
In related news the very first thing I do when installing W10 for someone is
[https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-
Windows-10](https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10) which among other
things uninstalls Windows Store.

Windows Apps are a joke. Have you seen the "new improved" windows explorer app
that just landed in insider builds? Its a frickin phone app Microsoft expects
you to use on the desktop.

