Devops - Get Bforartists on Windows Store (and in turn get it certified for the installer)

[Draise14]

Iyad and I have had a quick look at getting Bforartists certified and on the Windows App store. It's doable, and has a side benefit that we would also get the installer certified. It also isn't as expensive as we thought, so I'm thinking to make a tracker to do, get on the Windows Store, and get the installer certificate while at it.

Benefits of Windows certification

Participate in the multi-billion dollar Windows software market and biggest release of Windows
Be featured as compatible in the Windows setup compatibility report
Be listed in the Windows Store, with millions of potential customers around the world (Windows 8.1 only)
Have access to marketing assets and training from the Microsoft Partner Network
Earn certification logos to easily identify your app as high quality and Windows compatible
Give your customers confidence in the quality of your product

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/win_cert/windows-certification-portal

Goal of this task is to:

• Document the in's and out's of how
• Get the installer certified officially (I can purchase that if necessary)
• Put Bforartists on the Windows Store (free)

[esnosy]

https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9PD5L5XBRMR0?ocid=pdpshare

[Draise14]

HOLY CRAPPOLA! That's great! You did it!!!!!! What does this mean now!? We should update the website!

How do we maintain this? What are the steps?

[esnosy]

HOLY CRAPPOLA! That's great! You did it!!!!!! What does this mean now!? We should update the website!

How do we maintain this? What are the steps?

sorry for delay here are the steps, I have been preparing them this entire time

1. Make a release build
2. Open a "Developer Powershell for VS 2022" from using start menu search (comes with Visual Studio installed)
   
3. Navigate to where you have the source code using the cd command
   
4. Run the script using python (replace 4.1.1 with correct version)
   python.exe .\create_msix.py ..\bfa_build_windows_Release_x64_vc17_Release 4.1.1 store
   
5. Upload the .msix (you can find in a directory called "msix" one directory above the source code to somewhere where I can download it, or if you have direct access to the Windows Store you can upload it there