DesktopAppConverter : error 'E_MANIFEST_USE_DEFAULT_VALUE_FAILED

I had a strange error today using the Desktop App Converter with the parameters given from the Store for Business.

The conversion would fail with the following error:

I’m not sure why this fails as the PackageName is provided by the store and should be valid. An answer on stackoverflow suggested to use a different value for the PackageName parameter and then edit the manifest.

I don’t like this method as manual modifications of the manifest often leads to errors when submitting the application to the store.

So let’s have a look and see why we’re getting this error.

I searched for E_MANIFEST_USE_DEFAULT_VALUE_FAILED in the DesktopAppConverter folder and found 1 occurence in ManifestOps.ps1.

From a look at the code it wasn’t immediately clear where the validation failed so I decided to debug it.

I launched the DesktopAppConverter from the PowerShell ISE and set a breakpoint just before the

try
{
    Set-ManifestPropertyHelper -PropertyName $PropertyName -PropertySetMethod $PropertySetMethod -Value $Value -Logger $Logger
}
catch
{
    $Logger.RaiseUserException($PSCmdlet.MyInvocation.MyCommand.Name, "E_MANIFEST_SET_PROPERTY_FAILED", @($PropertyName, $value, $ParameterNameOfValue, $DescriptionLink), [System.ArgumentException].FullName)
}

Then I stepped through the code until I reached this part:

[void] SetPackageIdentityName($value)
{
    $this._manifest.Package.Identity.Name = $value
    $this.Validate()
}

Then I stepped into $this.Validate() which throws the actual error and it had the following text:

Error found in XMLThe 'Name' attribute is invalid - The value 'Company.ApplicationIdentifierXXXXXXXXXX' is invalid according to its datatype 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/appx/manifest/types:ST_PackageName' - The actual length is greater than the MaxLength value.

So let’s have a look at the XSD file and see what the constraints are for ST_PackageName. I search for ST_PackageName in all *.xsd files in the DesktopAppConverter and found it in AppxManifestTypes.xsd :

<xs:simpleType name="ST_PackageName">
  < xs:restriction base="ST_AsciiIdentifier">
    < xs:minLength value="3"/>
    < xs:maxLength value="50"/>
  </xs:restriction>
< /xs:simpleType>

So the issue in here is that the PackageName I used was longer that 50 characters!

Now there’s 2 solutions from here and that’s either reduce the PackageName length or specify an alternative, shorter, name by adding the -AppId  switch. E.g. -AppId "MyApplication".