Stable AppId via ComputeAppId()

[DominicMaas]

I was wondering if it's possible to somehow generate stable AppIds or override the AppId to something stable (for unpackaged apps)?

My Scenario:

Single Instance App, works perfectly fine when installed on machine, problem occurs when I try to run a portable version of my app for example (or launching from Visual Studio when the machine version is installed and running). Since the app exes are in separate locations, they gain separate AppIds, and instance redirecting no longer works.

This has caught us out a few times when debugging things internally, and we've also observed in the wild users with multiple instances of our app running at the same time (usually by doing weird things to their machine - but it would be nice to handle this regardless).

[lauren-ciha]

Thank you for filing an issue! Is your app using the Microsoft.Windows.Storage.Pickers APIs or are you looking for a general AppId override?

[DominicMaas]

In my specific case it's the

AppInstance.FindOrRegisterForKey("MuseHub_Instance");

API (C# projection).

Internally this computes an AppId / Mutex of Local\App.a3963ff6427b3ea_MuseHub_Instance_Mutex. The hashed prefix is based on the module location, so moving the Exe elsewhere would generate a unique app instance causing the above API to treat the two exes as seperate apps.

[riverar]

@DominicMaas Can you put together a repro and file a proper bug report?

[DominicMaas]

Here's a repro, it's pretty simple. Just unpackaged app, and then follow single instancing tutorial. I'm not sure if this is a design decision or could be considered a bug?

https://github.com/DominicMaas/AppIdRepro