visual studio 2012 - How to Distribute Compiled Windows 8 Metro Applications without Windows Store?

Question

I am just curious if there is a way to package up a Windows 8 Metro application to distribute it to others with the Windows 8 Developer Preview installed? It would be nice to be able to allow someone to just download and install, rather than requiring them to install VS'11 Preview and compile the code themselves in order to test out / use a Windows 8 Metro application that I've built.

Is there a way to distribute a compiled Windows 8 Metro application for others to test/use since the Windows Store is not yet live?

This would likely be useful for testing Metro apps on non-development machines even after the Windows Store is live.

Answer 1

Each machine that wants to install the application will need a developer license. See this page for some details.

When you have your app ready:

1. select Store->Create App Package
2. Select Build a package to use locally only
3. Follow the prompts

This will create a package in whatever folder you specified. You should be able to copy that to another developer-licensed machine and install it.

There will be a batch file called Add-AppxDevPackage in the directory. Running it will install the app. It must be run as an admininistrator.