Using winapp CLI with .NET MAUI (Windows)

This guide focuses on one MAUI-specific pitfall: the source manifest at Platforms/Windows/Package.appxmanifest contains $placeholder$ tokens that winapp package does not resolve. For MAUI, package using the generated manifest from obj\...\resizetizer\m\Package.appxmanifest.

A concrete MAUI sample project is available at samples/maui-app.

Prerequisites

1. .NET SDK + MAUI workload (Windows):

   winget install Microsoft.DotNet.SDK.10 --source winget
   dotnet workload install maui-windows
   

2. winapp CLI:

   winget install Microsoft.winappcli --source winget
   

1. Create a MAUI app and publish the Windows head

dotnet new maui -n mymauiapp --no-restore
cd mymauiapp

# The stock template targets every MAUI platform. Keep only Windows when
# maui-windows is the only installed workload.
[xml]$project = Get-Content .\mymauiapp.csproj
$propertyGroup = $project.SelectSingleNode("/*[local-name()='Project']/*[local-name()='PropertyGroup'][1]")
$project.SelectNodes("/*[local-name()='Project']/*[local-name()='PropertyGroup']/*[local-name()='TargetFrameworks']") |
  ForEach-Object { $_.ParentNode.RemoveChild($_) | Out-Null }
$windowsTfm = $project.CreateElement("TargetFrameworks", $project.DocumentElement.NamespaceURI)
$windowsTfm.InnerText = "net10.0-windows10.0.19041.0"
$propertyGroup.PrependChild($windowsTfm) | Out-Null
$project.Save((Resolve-Path .\mymauiapp.csproj).Path)

dotnet publish .\mymauiapp.csproj `
  -c Release `
  -f net10.0-windows10.0.19041.0 `
  -r win-x64 `
  -p:WindowsPackageType=None `
  -p:SelfContained=true `
  -p:WindowsAppSDKSelfContained=true `
  --output .\publish\win-x64

2. Package using the generated MAUI manifest

$manifest = ".\obj\Release\net10.0-windows10.0.19041.0\win-x64\resizetizer\m\Package.appxmanifest"
if (-not (Test-Path $manifest)) { throw "Resolved manifest not found: $manifest" }

winapp cert generate --manifest $manifest --if-exists overwrite

winapp package .\publish\win-x64 `
  --manifest $manifest `
  --executable mymauiapp.exe `
  --cert .\devcert.pfx

3. Optional: sign unpackaged binaries

winapp sign .\publish\win-x64\mymauiapp.exe .\devcert.pfx --password password

Validation script (dev + CI)

Use the MAUI sample Pester test script:

.\scripts\test-samples.ps1 -Samples maui-app

This runs samples/maui-app/test.Tests.ps1, which creates a MAUI app from scratch, publishes Windows output, validates the generated resizetizer manifest path, packages an MSIX with winapp, and signs the unpackaged executable.

The same script is also wired into .github/workflows/test-samples.yml under the maui-app matrix entry.