New in PSF 2025.07.01/02

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The Package Support Framework (PSF) was originally a Microsoft open-source project to help Win32/DotNet applications run when inside an MSIX Container.  TMurgent has taken up the support for the PSF in our own fork here on GitHub.

We have two back-to-back releases of the PSF to discuss.  This happened because we received an outside submission to a problem in the MfrFixup discovered by a user.  We are very grateful for the attention to detail and for contributing of a pull request to fix the code.

Release v2025.07.01

This is a feature release.

  • MfrFixup Feature: Added a new type of override setting for traditional redirections that allows for reversing it to be a local redirection.  This is to support the MfrFixup when used in conjuntion with Flexible Virtualization (FileSystemWriteVirtualization) for local and remote appdata.
  • MfrFixup Fix: Fix for calls to native paths that are not actually directrories, even the app calls CreateFile or CreateFile2 with parameters that look like a directory call.
  • MfrFixup Fix: Fix for FindFirstFIle and FindFirstFileEx to return the native path in the case of an ADR or ADL folder name.  Some apps get confused when the name changes from the requested one, so return using the native path.
  • PsfRuntime Change: Altered the name of the PSF_READY_MARKER used as a dummy registry call to signal in both debug logging, as well as ProcessMonitor the time at which all PSF dlls have been injected and the process will be resumed.  The new marker will append the application process name to the dummy key looked for.
  • General: Improvements in debug logging to achieve more consistency so that external tooling may process the log file.

v.2025.07.02

This release contains a single fix for MfrFixup.  It fixes an issue with the comparison of two file path strings to see if one is a subset of another.  This comparison was not being performed as a case-insensitive check.

To be used in:

  • TMEditX 6.0
  • PsfTooling 6.15 or above

 

For those unaware, PSF stands for Package Support Framework, an open-source utility that I contribute to for helping traditional Win32 and DotNet applications run inside the MSIX packaging container. This article contains information regarding new contributions.

By Tim Mangan

Tim is a Microsoft MVP, and a Citrix CTP Fellow. He is an expert in App-V and MSIX.