Unsolved Building a UWP app that can run on another machine..
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Hello all,
Been beating my head on this issue for a couple of weeks now, and am hopeful that someone can point out what I am doing wrong.
My ultimate goal is to take an existing Qt Win32 app, use the DesktopApplicationConverter, maybe sprinkle on some UWP calls to make it all work properly, and be able to post an app to the Windows app store. Little did I know, it isn't as easy as Microsoft's web pages seem to want to make it.
My first attempt was to take the current Win32 app, which is built as a fully static binary (with /MT), package it, and get it running. When I package it, and run it on my development machine, it works as well as I would expect. (Some stuff it attempts to do that isn't allowed by UWP errors out, but everything else seems to work.)
If I then sign the appx file, and move it to either a fresh Windows 10 install, or a Windows 10 "S mode" install, it claims to install, but running the app returns an error that indicates the app can't start. Looking in the event viewer, I can't seem to find anyway to troubleshoot WHY the app won't start. So, my first question is, has anyone run in to this and found a good way to troubleshoot the app starting on another machine?
After trying the "bull in a china shop" method, I decided to back up, and just try to build a "Hello World" UWP app, and get it running on both a fresh Windows 10 install and a Windows 10 "S mode" install. I created a widgets app in Qt Creator, then threw a label on the main window that says "Hello World". I built it in release mode with Qt Creator, then ran windeployqt against the .exe to get all of the necessary .dll files. I then updated the manifest for a test signing certificate that I have, ran makeappx, and signed the appx bundle. Again, this appx runs just fine on my development VM, but when I move it to either a fresh Windows 10 install, or a Windows 10 "S mode" VM, I see the splash screen, but the app never starts. In this case, I don't get any error messages from Windows, it just doesn't start. In event viewer, the only thing I see is an error that indicates the app didn't register with DCOM within the required timeout.
From what I can gather from looking at various Microsoft web pages, I suspect the issue I am running in to is that the VCLibs package for MSVC 2017 isn't installed on either the fresh Win 10 machine, or "S mode" machine. But, I can't seem to find any information on how to bundle that with my app, or force it to be downloaded from the store.
Has anyone else managed to build a simple UWP app with Qt and side-load it on to a fresh Windows 10 install? Or, even better, a Windows 10 "S mode" system? If so, can you point me to any information to help me chase down what is going wrong?
Thanks!