4 ms·

> MSI is deprecated Is it? The WiX Toolset still seems to be actively developed and MSIX doesn't seem to support all use cases. Has MSI been officially depreca

by ptx 3y ago

> MSI is deprecated Is it? The WiX Toolset still seems to be actively developed and MSIX doesn't seem to support all use cases. Has MSI been officially deprecated despite that? Also, MSIX's mandatory signing makes it too expensive and cumbersome for a hobby project, so it would be unfortunate if that became the only option.

mike_hearn 3y ago
It was marked as such at one point on their website, but now I searched for that again I can't find it anymore. Maybe they undeprecated it, hard to keep track of what MS are doing. It's not been developed for many years though. All the new features seem to go into MSIX. MSIX files can be self-signed if you install the cert first. Conveyor has an EXE wrapper that can do that for you. So you can distribute apps with it without buying signing certificates.
- ptx 3y ago
  But by installing a self-signed certificate, that certificate is trusted for all apps, not only for mine – right? This seems like a broken permission model. I only want permission to modify my own app, not every app of the system. If users have to trust me (and all other developers of self-signed applications) with permission to modify all apps, that makes the whole signing rigamarole kind of pointless. But if I do want to try this approach, do I have to install the certificate in Trusted Root Certification Authorities, or should it be in Trusted Publishers, or Trusted People? The first one would grant me even more privileges that I don't need, but what about the other two?
  - mike_hearn 3y ago
    BTW, dead thread, I should note that the certs Conveyor generates aren't CA certificates. They have your chosen identity name in them, so you can't use it to sign for other packages.
  - mike_hearn 3y ago
    If you publish through the MS Store, it only costs $19 to verify an individual (one off, not a subscription) and they sign it for you. So that's pretty cheap, well within the range of a hobby project. If you don't have some kind of signed identity then the concept of "your own" app doesn't exist, so indeed in that model you get permission to do what you want more or less. That's why it requires administrator elevation, whereas real signed packages don't. Of course this model is identical to the normal pre-MSIX model where any app installer can fiddle with any other app's files. You can put it in Trusted People, I think. I'd have to check the code to see where we put it.

by ptx 3y ago

mike_hearn 3y ago

It was marked as such at one point on their website, but now I searched for that again I can't find it anymore. Maybe they undeprecated it, hard to keep track of what MS are doing. It's not been developed for many years though. All the new features seem to go into MSIX. MSIX files can be self-signed if you install the cert first. Conveyor has an EXE wrapper that can do that for you. So you can distribute apps with it without buying signing certificates.

ptx 3y ago
But by installing a self-signed certificate, that certificate is trusted for all apps, not only for mine – right? This seems like a broken permission model. I only want permission to modify my own app, not every app of the system. If users have to trust me (and all other developers of self-signed applications) with permission to modify all apps, that makes the whole signing rigamarole kind of pointless. But if I do want to try this approach, do I have to install the certificate in Trusted Root Certification Authorities, or should it be in Trusted Publishers, or Trusted People? The first one would grant me even more privileges that I don't need, but what about the other two?
- mike_hearn 3y ago
  BTW, dead thread, I should note that the certs Conveyor generates aren't CA certificates. They have your chosen identity name in them, so you can't use it to sign for other packages.
- mike_hearn 3y ago
  If you publish through the MS Store, it only costs $19 to verify an individual (one off, not a subscription) and they sign it for you. So that's pretty cheap, well within the range of a hobby project. If you don't have some kind of signed identity then the concept of "your own" app doesn't exist, so indeed in that model you get permission to do what you want more or less. That's why it requires administrator elevation, whereas real signed packages don't. Of course this model is identical to the normal pre-MSIX model where any app installer can fiddle with any other app's files. You can put it in Trusted People, I think. I'd have to check the code to see where we put it.