Can't get WinAppDeployCmd for Appx deployment to work

Question

During the App Packaging and Deployment for Universal Windows Apps presentation (fast forward to 00:36:00) one specific command line utility - WinAppDeployCmd - was used for deployment Windows 10 Universal application to the phone running Windows 10 Mobile. This utility could be found here:

"c:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\x86\WinAppDeployCmd.exe"

But every time I'm trying to deploy sample .appx package to the Lunia 635 phone with Windows Mobile v10.0.12562.84 or Surface 3 device with Windows 10 Pro Insider Preview (all devices on the same network as my dev machine) - I'm getting the same "connection failed" error:

Windows App Deployment Tool Version

10.0.0.0 Copyright (c) Microsoft

Corporation. All rights reserved.

Opening connection to device at '192.168.1.139'.

0x80131500 - Connection Failed

0x800705B4 - Timed out waiting for network events.

Just in case - I could ping both of the devices from my dev machine without problem and can also deploy to any of them from VS2015RC (also tried with renamed WinAppDeployCmd.exe - to make sure that VS2015RC doing deployment somehow differently without using this tool).

So, I'm wondering - are there anyone who succeeded with app deployment using WinAppDeployCmd.exe?

Answer 1

This is a known issue in the current release. There is no workaround and it will light up in a future Windows 10 Insider Preview SDK and tools release.

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/5c8d6f20-699c-4da2-9460-f73e89bf27c3/known-issue-cannot-sideload-applications-using-winappdeploycmd-windows-10-insider-preview-sdk-and?forum=Win10SDKToolsIssues

Answer 2

I have succeeded to deploy an .appx using the WinAppDeployCmd command line tool. Probably the issue have been correct at the latest versions.

For the ones that are not familiar with this tool, it allows you to deploy an Universal Windows app from a Windows 10 machine to any Windows 10 Mobile device via USB or WiFi (since they're on the same subnet). That's a perfect solution if you doesn't have Visual Studio, doesn't have the app source code or if you're under a Hyper-V Virtual Machine.

Basically you will need:

1. Windows 10 SDK
2. Generate the .appx package (PC)
3. Enable the developer mode (Mobile)
4. Turn on the discovery mode (Mobile)
5. Get the code to pair devices (Mobile)
6. Get mobile IP address using WinAppDeployCmd tool (PC)
7. Run command (PC)

The command will look like this

WinAppDeployCmd install -file “<path>” -ip <ip> -pin <pin>

The tool can be found at C:\Arquivos de Programas (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\x86\WinAppDeployCmd.exe

You can find a detailed step-by-step tutorial here

Answer 3

This happened to me once when the USB socket was faulty and Windows compained about the device not being recognized. I switched sockets and everything worked. So make sure you try other sockets (or even a different computer, to rule out the specific machine).