Call it surprising, but Microsoft had some news about Windows to share at its Ignite 2020 conference, primarily related to developers who create solutions for the operating platform.
The gist of the matter is that new versions of products are coming like WinUI 3 Preview 3 that lets you make apps for ARM64 now.
First up, is talk about MSIX that now gives developers the ability to deploy files to a shared container instead of a standalone single MSIX container. This is a very big deal for applications that rely on shared files or registry settings.
In addition to this, MSIX apps can also now be automatically updated. All developers have to do is just add metadata with update settings to the app package, and the deed is done. Microsoft also unveiled a new Azure DevOps extension that automates the process of creating an MSIX package.
The Windows Subsystem for Linux is also in on new features. Users rocking Windows 10 versions 1903 and higher getting now have access to WSL 2, while GUI apps in WSL are in testing in the Windows Insider Program.
It is now also possible to install WSL simply by running the wsl –install command.
React Native for Windows has been amped up to version 0.63, which adds navigation support, better theming, automatic linking of native modules, and more.
Moving on, there are also some goodies for C# .NET 5 developers. They are now be able to create Windows Runtime components with a new CsWinRT tool. It is on track to become available as a public preview this month.
The Windows SDK team is releasing NuGet packages that help in building Windows apps in a more cloud-friendly fashion, without requiring a full SDK install, and instead using CI/CD pipelines.
And to top it all off, we have some improvements for Windows Terminal that now has hyperlink support. This handy little addition lets you click on things in Terminal and having them open in the browser.
The command line environment is also adding a jump list to launch right into a specific profile, plus there is a new command palette to easily navigate your terminal.
Good stuff all around!
