Re-New self-signed Code signing certificate for UWP apps

Question

We have an UWP app deployed to a number of devices. The self signed certificate that we have used to sign the app has expired.

Generating a new certificate changes the app strong name - so you can no longer update the app and requires an uninstall and then to reinstall, which would delete all of the files in the app folder (including local sqlite db that use use for local caching and that may or may not contain any data that hasn't been synced with the server)

We have tried using the RenewCert (http://may.be/renewcert/) to renew the certificate - but that drops off the code sign permission from the cert, and visual studio does not accept it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

When creating a new self-signed certificate, as long as the "Publisher Common Name" field stays as before, the package family name will not be changed.

The changing part of the package family name is a hash of this value.