Can I package prebuilt binary exe inside MSIX package?

Question

I have a console app written in C++, and I want to put it inside MSIX package to be able to distribute it to my users (and potentially put on Windows Store). I manually compiled the app to MyApp.exe file, and now I want to create MSIX package that includes this .exe file. Is it possible to do it with MSIX? So far I have been using Windows Application Packaging in Visual Studio, but it seems you must add a reference to your project in order to pack it (which I don't have, because I just have a binary file MyApp.exe). Any ideas how can I add a binary file to MSIX package or maybe some alternative way to package C++ app inside MSIX?

So far the only option I can see is to use MSI technology instead of MSIX, but I'd prefer to use a newer installation technology.

Answer 1

Microsoft's MakeAppx.exe tool can package arbitrary files into an MSIX package, it's probably the simplest way to accomplish this.

I tried to do something similar with Windows Application Packaging in Visual Studio a while back and gave up; the VS tooling for MSIX is buggy and poorly documented in my experience.