Project Centennial is here, if you have Insider Preview

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/bridges/desktop

The converter is here. Just found out from John Sheehan blog. I have not played with it yet.

Read carefully the requirements.

Watching the video:

Very Excited.
Very Excited.
Very very happy.
Wait, what was that…?
Still excited but waiting for the other shoe to drop…
Needs windows 10 Enterprise?
Slightly concerned (I dont have that level of Windows yet)…
Thinks: that must just be for the conversion… cant rely on end users having Windows Enterprise!
hmmm…Download still standing at 0.1Mb of 3.9 Gb
Oh, it needs a silent install for the converter…
Meh, OK, I can do that
Oh! Installshield could do it out of the box
Oh -, only the utterly top end version of Installshield…

I need to do a lot more reading…:slight_smile:

We are in for a period of adaptation and discovery…

Ouch. Enterprise Edition necessary. In the past you could install it with the Insider program. Now an MSDN subscription is necessary.

I think I will pass for now. Centennial will remain on the back burner until it becomes available for non millionaires…

Sorry for the premature hope…

Buy an Action Pack - $475 if I recall right - cheaper that a Xojo Pro license.

Thank you for the pointer.

However, given that the Windows Store is still in infancy, judging from the apps I already have there, it would take over a year to break even.

Not worth the investment.

John Sheehan clearly stated in his demo that Microsoft had made an error not to enable legacy applications to run in the new application model. I guess now they have to realize that the Enterprise edition is too narrow a target.

They will succeed killing Windows, you know. Amazing.

Too many obstacles on a path too uncertain. Delusions of grandeur. Now the king is Android. I might as well invest in the future.

[quote=258597:@Michel Bujardet]I guess now they have to realize that the Enterprise edition is too narrow a target.
[/quote]

I agree - it is an insane requirement really. And strange - normally it is only large corporates who would run the Enterprise edition.

For me, the deal is not the Windows Store.

I have been trying to ‘keep alive’ some older software best suited to XP, which has become creakier with every Windows release.
The virtualisation of add data, isolation of ini and registry, and so on, have denied it access to places it was written to write.
The source is no longer compilable, and it wont run on Windows 10 64 bit.

Ive been watching ‘Wine on Windows’ for a while because it works perfectly on Wine under Linux (better than it does in Windows!)
So ‘something similar’ that might allow this program to have a life into the future is my personal Obi-Wan
(There was another recent thread about legacy apps and the question of copyright… this is an old app I have a licence to resell and support, but its getting really hard.)

Until this announcement, I was seriously considering shutting down the website because its unsupportable in W10 at the moment.

I’ll keep my fingers very firmly crossed…

Why ? What language was it written in ?

Long story.
Its an MFC application that probably started life in 1994 , and although I’ve tried Visual Studio (which just laughed) , and various older and older Visual C++ distributions, the errors I get suggest that there are probably some source files missing.
The original author stopped coding many years ago, says I have ‘everything he can lay his hands on’ so my options remain Windows compatibility mode (no longer enough), some kind of bottle methodology, or let it die … :slight_smile:

huh… maybe it wasnt that long a story after all… :slight_smile:

Can you not run it under emulation ( other than Wine )?

After some digging on whether I can upgrade my Win 10 Preview to Enterprise Preview without having to do a fresh re-install, I stumbled on these articles that Microsoft clarified that Centennial Desktop App Converter Preview will run in Windows 10 Pro and there was a typo on their website.

http://betanews.com/2016/04/08/desktop-app-converter/

https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/66181/microsoft-ships-centennial-desktop-app-converter-preview

Minimum: Windows 10 Anniversary Update preview (Build 10.0.14316.0 and later).

Oh , easily, for myself.

But I cant sell ‘run this app in a VM’ to an end user.
They need a normal install routine and no fuss.

Heres an idea:

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/windows/

[quote=258623:@Jeff Tullin]Heres an idea:

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/windows/[/quote]

Is that not just the same as ‘run this app in a VM’? You’d still have to set up a virtual machine in some way.

You don’t risk anything trying the converter.

[quote=258618:@Cho Sing Kum]Microsoft Ships Centennial Desktop App Converter Preview - Thurrott.com

Minimum: Windows 10 Anniversary Update preview (Build 10.0.14316.0 and later).[/quote]

Good news. I trust Paul Thurrott who is a very reliable MS specialist.

Now, the puzzle : with the fast ring, current build is 14295. But nowhere ever anywhere in Windows 10 Preview I have seen the notation “10.0.14316.0”. I shall try to run the converter when I have time set aside under 64 bit Pro I have here.

Forget my app. I was wondering if this VM held Windows Enterprise: the docs suggest it does, although Im doubting it will be the precise version needed to run the converter, which is what I had in mind for the VM

I also have not yet seen 14316 show up in my “Fast Ring” Win10 VM.

[quote=258642:@Michel Bujardet]You don’t risk anything trying the converter.

Good news. I trust Paul Thurrott who is a very reliable MS specialist.

Now, the puzzle : with the fast ring, current build is 14295. But nowhere ever anywhere in Windows 10 Preview I have seen the notation “10.0.14316.0”. I shall try to run the converter when I have time set aside under 64 bit Pro I have here.[/quote]

I just woke up. I did get my update to 10.0.14316.0 before I went to bed. What I did was do a “Windows Upate” manually.

Type Windows Update in the search bar next to the Start button, then select Windows Update in the result and the Windows Updae dialog will open to search for the latest version.

“The King (DOS) is dead. Long live the King (Bash)”