Are there many people in here writing and deploying Universal apps? I ask because weird unexpected things are happening when I package my app for side-loading and testing.
I estimate that the small app I'm writing would generate a 4MB MSI file if it was a desktop app. However my first UWP package was 40MB and my latest one after adding a few more referfences is 102MB. It's preposterous for me to ask colleagues to download a 102MB test package to their tablets. In an attempt to reduce the package size to something sensible I've been fiddling with the options in the "Create App Packages" dialog and I get unpredictable output folders. Sometimes the folder are named x86_x64, Debug or x64. I can't find a pattern yet. Worst of all, I can't reduce the size. Then my cat suggested that I compile and package in Release config, not Debug. But it gets weirdly worse... The Release compile takes 15 minutes, it generates a fantastic 2.4 gigwatts of temporary files and the package (with an unpredictable folder name) is still 68MB. In summary, this UWP build and package process is so utterly absurd and impractical that I guess I must be doing something wrong. If anyone else has been through this and has solved it or can explain it, please advise me. *Greg K*
