Beta test for windows store apps

if your developing a new Windows 8 app and you want to test it on another device (e.g. Surface), you’ll need to use a technique called sideloading. This can easily be done through a 
few steps that I’ll describe in this post.

How do I Sideload My App on Another PC or ARM

 Device?

In order to deploy an app, you need an App Package. Visual Studio has functionality to create an App Package you can use to deploy your app to another machine. The following steps are how to create a local App Package.

1. In Visual Studio Express 2012, choose “Create App Package” in the Store menu.
   
   Note: In Visual Studio 2012 Ultimate, the Store menu is in a different location. In the “Project” menu, use the “Store” option .
2. In the Create App Package wizard, you will want to create a local package. Therefore, answer “No” to the “Do you want to build a package to upload to the Windows Store”. Notice the information text indicates this is the option for sideloading.
   
3. The next dialog provides a choice of processor platforms to target. In most cases, you would want to choose “Any CPU”. This will allow you to target all of the processor platforms and architectures. However, if you are using platform specific binaries in your app, you’ll need to build separate packages for each platform.
   
4. In my example, I’ll just leave the default “Any CPU” and click “Create”
   
   Note the wizard gives us a link to where the package was created.

If we click the link, here is an example of what was created:

Here is a quick summary of the relevant files in the package directory:

Appx package (MyApp_1.0.0.0_AnyCPU_Debug.appx)

The appx package is a zip file of all of the program files for your app. This file gets deployed and installed into Windows. Try renaming the extension to “.zip” and open the zip file to see what is inside. Don’t forget to change it back before you try and deploy it.

Developer test certificate (MyApp_1.0.0.0_AnyCPU_Debug.cer)

This is your development certificate. This is the certificate that was used to sign the appx package.

PowerShell script (Add-AppDevPackage.ps1)

This PowerShell script can be used to install the development certificate and install the App.

 

Installing the App on the Target Machine

Everything you need to deploy the app is included in the package directory created by Visual Studio. I usually copy the directory to a USB memory stick to transfer the app to the target machine. On the target machine, you just need to run the PowerShell script (Add-AppDevPackage.ps1) to deploy the app. You can do this easily by right clicking on the script and selecting “Run with PowerShell”.

The first action performed by the script is to install the certificate. It needs to run elevated in order to perform this step. If PowerShell isn’t running elevated, the script will prompt to start an elevated process to install the certificate.

You will be warned and prompted to allow the certificate to be installed.

Once the certificate is installed, the app package is installed.

 Your app should now be installed on the target machine. You should be able to find the tile on the Start screen (usually at the end of the list):

The final requirement is to allow trusted apps to run. If your target machine has Visual Studio installed, this requirement will already be met. However, if you don’t have Visual Studio installed, you can meet the requirement through group policy or setting a registry key.  For development purposes, it’s usually easiest to set the registry key.

• Use RegEdit to navigate to the key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Appx
• Set AllowAllTrustedApps (REG_DWORD) to the value of 1

Your app should now run on the target machine.