Alternative to Microsoft App Store installation instructions for Windows

[kdheepak]

On my $work computer, the Microsoft App Store appears to be deactivated. On a fresh install of Windows 11, I am not able to open the App Store.

If I click a web link to "Open Store App", I get this:

On a fresh install of Windows 11, I don't have winget installed:

This makes the current landing page instructions not useful.

Even when installed from the store in the past, colleagues of mine have gotten different errors. The only one that I was able to screenshot was this:

and I opened an issue about it: https://github.com/JuliaLang/juliaup/issues/806

But I've seen other issues when installing from the app store before associated with permissions.

When I either build juliaup from source (impractical for the average user because it requires rustup + cargo) and when using Julia "manual" installer links but that doesn't include juliaup, I don't have any problems.

Is there packaged .exe or an installer that you can make available on the official installation page?

I also think recommending installing from the official Microsoft App Store on the Julia Downloads page is not a good idea in general.

1. It's not clear where it installs to, making tracking the output of where julia more confusing
2. It's hard to uninstall, e.g. if you go to the store page, you see this:
3. It requires signing in to a Microsoft account to download Julia
4. It may cause issues if Microsoft prevent certain kinds of "Apps" to be published in the future

[davidanthoff]

Take a look at https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1.12-dev/manual/installation/. It would probably be a good idea to link that on the landing page once that version of the docs is officially released. Short version is that we have two alternatives on Windows to the Windows Store/winget story available.

The error you link to doesn't strike me as related to the Windows Store at all, and I'm not aware of any other Windows Store related bugs/problems. If you know of any, please open issues!

I don't agree with the general sentiment that we should stay away from the Store in general. There are some huge upsides to it, we get a super reliable and well designed update story for Juliaup itself, and it really is the primary install method on Windows, so I don't see a reason not to use it.

It's not clear where it installs to, making tracking the output of where julia more confusing

It is just the recommended way to do things on Windows for more than a decade, I don't think that is confusing.

It's hard to uninstall

It just appears in the normal place to uninstall apps on Windows, under Settings->Apps->Installed apps. Or you just right click the Julia item in the start menu and select uninstall. Don't really see how that is confusing?

Point 3 and 4 are real points, but I think those are pretty common in app stores, and at the end of the day it is a trade-off that comes with a (somewhat) curated app store. I do have a contact at MS who was super helpful getting us into the app store, and I would be very surprised if we ever ran into an issue around 4).