Within the final article, we talked about how MSIX is the following gen deployment package deal. We touched upon few perks of utilizing MSIX. One merchandise we didn’t go into element is how MSIX manages to run Win32 apps with breeze and what the shortcomings are.
Operating Win32 Apps
Nicely, if MSIX wants to attain true software isolation or safety amongst different advantages, it wants to limit few operations. As an illustration, it might’t enable apps to write down information to the set up listing or present working listing. If you’re an IT Professional, at first look this strikes as an actual non-starter. However, what if there’s a resolution?
Welcome to PSF
PSF, brief for Package deal Help Framework, is the answer to how one can overcome points with Win32 apps working in a containerized atmosphere. The framework is constructed on Microsoft’s Detours know-how which principally ‘redirects’ API calls to a special location the app has entry to.
As soon as you already know the difficulty, PSF will can help you apply a repair as much as the app which makes it MSIX appropriate. The way in which PSF works is, MSIX replaces the primary exe with one thing referred to as PSF Launcher which reads a configuration file (config.json) and injects the fixups into the primary exe. For extra detailed documentation on how PSF works, you seek advice from Microsoft’s documentation right here.
There may be nonetheless a catch although. For IT Professionals, there isn’t a means of understanding of a problem with out really working into it. There isn’t any magic wand that runs on a bunch of information and comes up with points. As a result of the issues that we’re coping with right here, are runtime points.
Microsoft has open sourced Package deal Help Framework and is inviting builders to contribute to extra repair ups, in order that the group can reap the benefits of them quicker. With Microsoft actively managing this and impartial builders contributing to extra fixups, over long run, we should always have a wholesome set of fixups that cowl most typical points.
