Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Win32 and .NET desktop apps can now be published in the Windows Store

blogs.windows.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 158 posts

Re: Win32 and .NET desktop apps can now be published in the Windows Store

#61

Post by flukus »

pjmlp wrote: post #48
swiley wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The global filesystem is only a problem if you run lots of closed source/untrustworthy apps. Many of us don't and use the global filesystem very heavily and very much hope it does not go away.

Average users don't ever know where they are supposed to save their files. Every time I visit family I get to sort out the files scattered around the hard disk.

Every time I call my mum I have to call my dads mobile first because she can't remember to press the button to hang up. Ther's only so much simplyfying you can do.

Funilly enough, in her 70's now she's taught herself to use a computer and can manage documents in the file system.

Re: Win32 and .NET desktop apps can now be published in the Windows Store

#62

Post by kodfodrasz »

userbinator wrote: post #30
kodfodrasz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UWP is limited as it is relatively new. The new (capabilities based) security model is clearly better than the old "if you are admin, you can do whatever you want" model. The old model was inadequate even at the start of the multimedia age, but it was not recognized until recently. The new sandboxed operation creates more portable and reproduceably operating apps. The limitations will show, as more and more usecases…

Personally I hope once the global filesystem concept will be gone, and apps will use isolated or shared storages where shared storage will get explicit access rights for each app/user it is shared with I very much hope not, since default and easy global sharing is what makes desktop OSs so very useful, and a lot of this sharing is spontaneous, creative, and ad-hoc. Besides, we already have things like filesystem perm…

Filesystem permissions cannot be controlled on a per app level. I do not like the fact, that an installation of for example a game needs admin rights, and has every chance to access data it should not be able to do.

I see your point, that the current solution offers a simple (and vulnurable solution). This is why I have said that these challenges need to be addressed. The current solutions may not be the best, but for an evolution to start we need to make changes, and try different approaches.

Re: Win32 and .NET desktop apps can now be published in the Windows Store

#63

Post by pjc50 »

youdontknowtho wrote: post #34
flohofwoe wrote: post #13

So if I understand it right, this is basically running apps in a Win32-emulator/sandbox where all 'unsafe' Win32 file and registry accesses are redirected into sandboxed locations. I wonder why MS didn't go this way from the beginning instead of pushing that Frankensteinian half-desktop/half-mobile monstrosity called WinRT^H^H^H UWP on us. The UWP application model has been modelled after the (now 10 years old) iOS/A…

Wow. UWP isn't a mobile OS ported to Windows. The whole WinRT is an OS and WinRT is an API set confused things. Forget that there was an ARM tablet. WinRT means the Windows Run Time. It's a set of API's that are built with the Windows OS. The "they made it mobile" part was really a side effect of trying to move to a more managed execution model where the OS took a more aggressive approach to managing the execution of…

> schadenfreude

They've built up an enourmous reserve of ill-will that will take years to diminish. It wasn't all that many years ago that they were tangentially involved in SCO's last-ditch attempt to destroy Linux. The Win10 telemetry and forced-updates controversies are ongoing.

Everyone can see a possible future in which all the doors for shipping software to users' computers without paying 30% to the platform holder and submitting to their arbitary rules are closed. (The justification will be malware, of course). That day has not yet come, and it's not necessarily implied by WinRT, but it's a step in that direction.

Re: Win32 and .NET desktop apps can now be published in the Windows Store

#64

Post by flukus »

Already__Taken wrote: post #39
flukus wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I'm using something more modern, like chocoaltey? MSI has never played well with CI servers and wix is way too complicated.

Seems like they want MSI to go away. I'm finding it harder and harder to find published ones.

The kind of tried it years ago by not including setup projects in visual studio (MS Developers think publishing directly from VS is a good idea), the problem was there wasn't a better alternative.

I didn't mind NSIS (nullsoft of winamp fame), but it was weird to say the least. Install scripts were a high level, domain specefic variant of assembly...

Re: Win32 and .NET desktop apps can now be published in the Windows Store

#65

Post by kodfodrasz »

swiley wrote: post #59
UK-AL wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for the vast majority of people are not IT experts. The store model is probably vastly safer for the average user.

Honestly I think not having a global filesystem makes things harder for the "average user." Most college students aren't going to only keep their word documents in word for example, they need to email them and upload them to tools like blackboard.

this is why shared storages are also needed, where apps can have a common view of some set of data.

Re: Win32 and .NET desktop apps can now be published in the Windows Store

#66

Post by ctolkien »

garganzol wrote: post #47

Are those UWP packaged apps could be downloaded and installed from a website in a few mouse clicks? If not then thank you, I would not bother to participate in a walled garden.

Yes, the store is just one distribution model. The web, or whatever is also fine.

Re: Win32 and .NET desktop apps can now be published in the Windows Store

#67

Post by raesene6 »

swiley wrote: post #40
kodfodrasz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UWP is limited as it is relatively new. The new (capabilities based) security model is clearly better than the old "if you are admin, you can do whatever you want" model. The old model was inadequate even at the start of the multimedia age, but it was not recognized until recently. The new sandboxed operation creates more portable and reproduceably operating apps. The limitations will show, as more and more usecases…

The global filesystem is only a problem if you run lots of closed source/untrustworthy apps. Many of us don't and use the global filesystem very heavily and very much hope it does not go away.

Unless you or someone you trust has audited an application, all apps are untrusted and should be given least privileges (e.g. the mobile/UWP model).

Personally I'd suggest that the trade off is whether the risks of global filesystems are worth it in productivity benefits.

For standard users (non IT-professionals) I think they are not and for IT professionals, in most cases, I think they are.

Re: Win32 and .NET desktop apps can now be published in the Windows Store

#68

Post by raesene6 »

flukus wrote: post #55
kodfodrasz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UWP is limited as it is relatively new. The new (capabilities based) security model is clearly better than the old "if you are admin, you can do whatever you want" model. The old model was inadequate even at the start of the multimedia age, but it was not recognized until recently. The new sandboxed operation creates more portable and reproduceably operating apps. The limitations will show, as more and more usecases…

I really disagree with UWP being a better model than limited UAC. Apps being able to talk to each other and the filesystem and interacting is what makes them useful. The linux/sudo approach is the best comrpomise between security and utility I'm yet to come across. > The old system had defaults originating from the single user non-multimedia usecases left over as a legacy, but currently we have so many things going o…

Generally the way I've seen sudo implemented in all desktop linuxes is that after providing a password the process gets all access.

This to me isn't a great trade off as it relies on the user invoking the process understanding the security risks they're taking, which is a tricky one.

Sure you can do more with sudo, but unless it's the default, most people won't

Re: Win32 and .NET desktop apps can now be published in the Windows Store

#69

Post by userbinator »

kodfodrasz wrote: post #62
userbinator wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I hope once the global filesystem concept will be gone, and apps will use isolated or shared storages where shared storage will get explicit access rights for each app/user it is shared with I very much hope not, since default and easy global sharing is what makes desktop OSs so very useful, and a lot of this sharing is spontaneous, creative, and ad-hoc. Besides, we already have things like filesystem perm…

Filesystem permissions cannot be controlled on a per app level. I do not like the fact, that an installation of for example a game needs admin rights, and has every chance to access data it should not be able to do. I see your point, that the current solution offers a simple (and vulnurable solution). This is why I have said that these challenges need to be addressed. The current solutions may not be the best, but fo…

Filesystem permissions cannot be controlled on a per app level.

I thought that's how Android's filesystem permission works? Each app runs as its own "user", and the FS permission bits restrict what it can access. This is a common solution in the Unix world. The problem on Android is that the filesystem is relatively hidden, and there's no easy way to change those permissions to allow more or less access.

Perhaps having the user as "root", along with all the actually-trusted apps (including those from the OS), and everything else setuid to their own per-app users, would be a useful configuration. Everything that's fully trusted is free to interact, while isolating those which aren't.

I do not like the fact, that an installation of for example a game needs admin rights, and has every chance to access data it should not be able to do.

That's possibly because of a need to install kernel-mode components (might be DRM related). If you're truly paranoid, VMs would be a better choice for isolation. But fundamentally, I don't believe in installing/using/changing apps that I don't completely trust, so perhaps this is a less of a problem for me and I'd rather have everything be "open".

Re: Win32 and .NET desktop apps can now be published in the Windows Store

#70

Post by flohofwoe »

benaadams wrote: post #41
flohofwoe wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using Windows (and OSX, and Linux) everyday and recently started (but didn't finish because of UWP's weirdness) porting my 3D coding framework over to UWP. The same framework is also running on Win32, OSX, Linux (incl RaspPI), iOS, Android, HTML5 and PNaCl, so I do have some multi-platform experience. Of these platforms, and with the exception of Android NDK, UWP is the most painful to port to (if you're interest…

How does a conversion of one of your Win32 exes run with the new system? Can do a manual convert ( https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/desktop... ) or use the tool to create the appx then double click to install, I believe...

I'll try that as soon as I'm back on my Win10 laptop. If this works well it will be highly preferable over an UWP port, because too many compromises have to be made to run games on top of UWP.

What I'd actually like to see is a new application model and set of APIs 100% focuses on games, in the original spirit of DirectX. The required API footprint for games is minimal and should be easy to sandbox.

None of the existing desktop or mobile operating systems are particularly well suited for games, writing window system glue code and input event handling is terrible everywhere outside of the game console world.

Only Microsoft cared about that in the early days of DirectX and before it's gaming focus shifted to the Xbox and Xbox360. We need a new DirectX initiative which fixes the flaws of UWP for games. We don't need one generic solution which is supposed to work for all application types, we need a couple of highly specialised APIs and specialised application models. As Windows8 has shown, one-size-fits-all doesn't work.

Post reply on HN