Publish msixbundle from MAUI project?

[SWortham]

I just finished my MAUI application which is intended to replace an old UWP application in the Microsoft Store. But after uploading my msix file I'm getting a message in the Microsoft Store that says, "A previous submission for this app was released with a Windows 10/11 .msixbundle or .appxbundle. Subsequent submissions must continue to contain a Windows 10/11 .msixbundle or .appxbundle."

So now I'm trying to figure out how to configure the project to create an msixbundle or appxbundle. I've added these two lines to my csproj...

<PropertyGroup>
    <AppxBundle>Always</AppxBundle>
    <AppxBundlePlatforms>x86|x64|arm</AppxBundlePlatforms>
</PropertyGroup>

But still every time I go to publish from Visual Studio all that's created is a single msix file. Any ideas?

[SWortham]

It looks to me like this feature is missing from Visual Studio for a MAUI application. I say that because when I go to Visual Studio to publish my old UWP app, I see a dialog that says "Generate app bundle" but there is no such dialog when I publish the MAUI app.

I found a workaround. It's a bit cumbersome but it seems to work.

1. Set AppxAutoIncrementPackageRevision to False in your PropertyGroup inside your csproj file.
2. Create msix files for x86 and x64 (and whatever other targets you need) through the publish profiles in Visual Studio. Just use one publish profile per target. Make sure you specify a separate directory for each publish profile so they don't stomp on each other.
3. Copy each msix file into a new directory. This directory should contain nothing but the msix files.
4. Run MakeAppx.exe like this:
   ./makeappx.exe bundle /bv 0.0.0.0 /d "{PATH_WHERE_MSIX_FILES_LIVE}" /p "{SEPARATE_PATH_FOR_YOUR_MSIXBUNDLE}"