About UWP/WinUI2 and WinAppSdk/WinUI3 Delivery and Runtime Modes

[softworkz]

FFmpegInteropX is one of the very few native code packages which are aiming to support both, UWP and WinAppSdk applications. A few others are offered by Microsoft but beyond that, it's getting hard to find any others.
That's probably the reason why it's hard to get the required information and understanding from existing documentation, which covers specific parts only, spread over many different places, and sometimes can only be found in GitHub comments from MSFT people.

It took me quite some time get the bigger picture together and still there are some "holes", mainly because I didn't research those parts that I didn't need to know. Let's maintain this post as a work-in-progress and a one-stop reference. I'm making a start now and as questions arise and more information is acquired, we can further amend this post.

Overview Table

	Packaged	Container	Identity	Process SID	File Access	C/C++ Runtimes	Store Allowed
UWP
Classic UWP	Yes	UWP	Yes	UWP Container	Restricted	App-Local	Yes (All)
UWP Desktop	Yes	?	Yes	UWP Container	Restricted	App-Local	Yes (Windows)
WinAppSDK
Packaged, Containerized	Yes	Light	Yes	Special SID (1)	Restricted	System	Yes (Windows)
Packaged, no Container	Yes	No	Yes	Current User	?	System	Yes (Windows)
Not Packaged, Containerized	No	Light	No	Special SID (2)	?	System	No
Not Packaged, no Container	No	No	No	Current User	Full, like user	System	No

(to be continured)

[Minmoose]

I don't have a text source for this as it was in a Teams call with a MS engineer last year, but I've been told WinAppSDK's "Packaged, no Container" has Full Unrestricted access to the file system just like a "Not Packaged, no Container" app. With that said I've never bothered to test it. 🙃