Including .PDB files in the appx package / install directory

Question

Note: I originally posted here, but was told to move the question to this forum instead.

For debug reasons, we'd like to include the .pdb files associated with our .dll's in the install/app directory for our Windows 8 Store application. I understand that uploading an .appxsym file provides more detailed log information, but for a service like BugSense or Testflight,  I'd require the .pdb files in the same directory as our .dlls. In doing so I've run into a couple problems and was curious on the best way to proceed. Note that we currently use MSBuild to automatically create our appx packages.

.PDB files seem to get copied into a .appxsym package. Is there a way that we can tell the package upload/installer to unzip the contents of these into the target directory of our .appx package? Finding a simple way to include these in the final .appx package would be the most preferred way.

In the event that can't be done, I've also noticed that we can do the MakeAppx tool with a list of files to include as an argument. This works well except for things like content with it's "copy to output directory" set to "do not copy", or specifically the Microsoft.Advertising.WinRT.UI folder that's created in the install folder/appX folders when unpacked or deployed. Is there a way to include the dependency files for the AdSDK like this? The Microsoft.Advertising.WinRT.UI.winmd files get included, just not the Microsoft.Advertising.WinRT.UI folders.

Answer 1

Hi RoyBatts,

I am trying to involve someone familiar with this topic to further look at this issue. There might be some time delay. Appreciate your patience.
 
Thank you for your understanding and support.

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Min Zhu
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us
Develop and promote your apps in Windows Store
Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help.

Answer 2

Hi RayBatts,

In the above, are you referring to the package that you upload to the store or are you talking about side-loading apps?

- Ashish [MSFT]

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Ashish Sahu [MSFT]

Answer 3

Both, though I believe I've got more questions about the package that gets uploaded to the store.

Answer 4

From http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/windows/apps/hh446767.aspx#create_package_using_dir -

"Place the AppxManifest.xml in the root of a directory containing all of the payload files for your app. An  identical directory structure is created for the .appx package, and will be available when the package is extracted at deployment time."

So, if you please your PDB files according to your requirements, this would package it and they should be available at the same place when deployed.

Did you try that? Did it not work?

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Ashish Sahu [MSFT]

Answer 5

I've been told that apps that are submitted to the Windows Store must be built with the tool through Visual Studio 2012. Is this not true?

Answer 6

It is not true that Visual Studio is required.

Visual Studio makes it easy for the common cases, but if you have specific needs you can get more control by building it yourself using MakeAppx as described in the link Ashish provided.

--Rob

Answer 7

I couldn't find much documentation on MakeAppx.. Do mapping files support wildcards?