How to Deploy WinRT Apps From a WinRT App

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What is the most user-friendly way to deploy Windows 8 WinRT apps from within a WinRT app assuming they are already signed with a valid sideloading certificate?

Windows Phone 8 has a nice API for installing XAP packages, but I can't find anything similar for Windows 8.

The best thing I can think of is to download the various installation files to, for instance, My Documents and ask users to switch over to windows explorer and run the powershell scrpt, but that is very user un-friendly. Furthermore it looks like saving appx files is restricted in the manifest, so they would need to be zipped.

Can appx files be deployed via msi? That would be slightly more user-friendly. Am I missing anything?

EDIT This solution needs to work for x86 as well as ARM.

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windows-8windows-runtime
I strongly suggest you look at Windows Intune for managing sideloading deployments to WindowsRT devices. - SecurityMatt
Yea, how does Intune do it? My customer already has an MDM solution for other device types, essentially putting them in competition with Intune. p.s. Thanks @SecurityMatt for inferring this was for WindowsRT, I forgot to mention that but will add now. - Lee Richardson
Windows Intune is a Microsoft-allowed desktop app. Since you can't use your own desktop apps in WindowsRT, you'll have to leverage something like Intune for this. - SecurityMatt

1 Answers

1
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The API for installing packages in Windows 8 is the PackageManager. Normally this API isn't available to Windows Store apps, but if you have a special certificate or your execution environment is somehow adapted, maybe it could work.