Back at Build 2016, Microsoft announced a UWP desktop app “converter” which enabled developers to bring their existing desktop applications to the Universal Windows Platform (UWP). In line with this, Microsoft has just announced a new desktop packaging project which brings a UWP app converter to Visual Studio 15.
Ultimately, the new packaging project makes it easier to build and test apps converted with the Desktop Bridge directly from within Visual Studio. Under the hood, the packaging project has a configuration file that allows Visual Studio to deploy any updates a developer makes to the binaries from editing desktop app projects directly into the UWP app package. Developers can set a break point in existing code, step through it, and also launch and debug the UWP app package directly from within Visual Studio by just pressing F5.
Creating new projects in Visual Studio 15
To try out the new packaging project, you must make sure that you’re running Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14232. You must also install the Desktop App Converter Preview, Visual Studio 15 Preview 2 (or higher), and download Desktop to UWP Packaging VSIX from the Visual Studio Gallery.
If this sounds interesting, you can visit this webpage to learn more about how to use the new project. Then, if you do happen to try it out, please let us know how it is going by dropping us a comment below.
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