Yesterday, I announced the formalization and availability of my own branch of the PSF to support MSIX in this blob post: New home for the PSF: 2021 Sept – Confessions of a Guru (tmurgent.com). Today, I am following up with announcements of two important software releases (immediately available) to leverage this improved version of the PSF.
In both cases, today’s announcements are for IT Pros wishing to repackage existing Win32 and DotNet Framework packages that they have into MSIX and are finding that they often need the PSF for compatibility reasons.
PsfTooling 4.14:
This is free software that is available either from The Microsoft Store here https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/tmurgent-psftooling/9nc6k0q954jv?activetab=pivot:overviewtab or directly from my website from this page: PsfTooling (tmurgent.com).
PsfTooling is used during the middle of the capture process when using the Microsoft MSIX Packaging Tool to analyze and add PSF components into your package. You use the tool right after installing the application to be captured, when it analyzes you installation and recommends fixups. You choose components to be added and configure the json from this tool, then return to the MSIX Packaging tool to complete the packaging.
TMEditX 1.7:
This is licensed software available TMurgent that you can read about here: TMEditX About (tmurgent.com). TMEditX is a simpler and more capable alternative to PsfTooling. With TMEditX, you complete the MSIX capture using tooling like the Microsoft MSIX Packaging Tool and create a MSIX package without the PSF.
You then open the MSIX package with TMEditX and it analyzes the package similar to how PsfTooling does, however TMEditX can save the resulting MSIX package itself and is therefore not limited by the current limitations of the Microsoft tool. It is also a bit “smarter” in how to apply the configurations with an eye for improved application compatibility.
In addition to the new PSF, Version 1.7 has numerous fixes to just make it easier to apply the PSF. But more importantly, it also now has some awesome automation capabilities. I bragged about how I used PowerShell to automate the full capture and fixup of 70 packages with the click of a single button in this post last week: Automated MSIX Repackaging with PSF – Confessions of a Guru (tmurgent.com), and the new command line interface in this version of TMEditX is how the packages were automatically analyzed and fixed and saved as either MSIX or CIM packages. You can read about the new command line options in TMEditX here: TMEditX CmdLine Options (tmurgent.com) .
The bottom line is, you can now just run a command line against every new package you create and it will do the right thing for you most of the time, figuring out if you need the PSF and applying it for maximum application compatibility. You don’t even have to get your hands dirty to fix your packages or even be aware if they needed it!
TMEditX also comes with the companion TmMsixDeploy Introduction (tmurgent.com) application, which is very useful as part of your testing process, or to create and test AppInstaller files.
The software has a free, fully functional, trial version here: TMEditX Download (tmurgent.com) and pricing here: Purchase TMEditx (tmurgent.com), which includes a bundle option with TMEdit for those packaging in App-V also.
