Wren

Publishing Wren on winget

Wren can be offered through the Windows Package Manager (winget), so that winget install FromentSoftware.Wren installs it. This is not automatic: a published release does not reach winget on its own. The step below makes the manifest; the submission to Microsoft's winget-pkgs repository is a manual pull request, and only Sacha does it.

There is no Microsoft Store package (the Store needs an MSIX and a developer account; the release is a single portable .exe, which winget supports directly as a portable installer).

What the release is

Every release publishes one file, wren-<version>-windows-x64.exe (see wrentool package and .github\workflows\release.yml), plus SHA256SUMS.txt with its SHA-256. It is not an installer: it is the program itself, which carries its licences, its version and the Visual C++ runtime it needs, and integrates into the desktop from within (Setup). So the winget installer type is portable: winget downloads the .exe, keeps it, and adds a link named wren to its own links folder (on the PATH), so wren launches it from a terminal.

1. Make the manifest

After the release vX.Y.Z is published on GitHub:

PowerShell
build\wrentool winget -Version X.Y.Z

With only -Version, the script reads the published release of that version from GitHub (api.github.com/repos/sachahjkl/wren): the download URL of wren-X.Y.Z-windows-x64.exe and its SHA-256 from SHA256SUMS.txt. Pass -Url and -Sha256 to override them (an offline run, a mirror, a release not public yet):

PowerShell
build\wrentool winget -Version X.Y.Z -Url https://.../wren-X.Y.Z-windows-x64.exe -Sha256 <hash>

It writes three YAML files under build\winget\X.Y.Z\ (schema 1.6.0):

  • FromentSoftware.Wren.yaml — the version manifest;
  • FromentSoftware.Wren.installer.yaml — the installer (x64, portable, the URL, the hash, the wren command alias);
  • FromentSoftware.Wren.locale.en-US.yaml — the English description, publisher, licence and links.

-Out <folder> changes where they go; -PackageIdentifier and -Repo change the identifier and the GitHub repository if they ever move.

2. Check the manifest locally

With winget installed:

PowerShell
winget validate build\winget\X.Y.Z
winget install --manifest build\winget\X.Y.Z    # a real install from the local manifest, to try it

winget validate must pass with no error. An install should put wren on the PATH and winget list should show FromentSoftware.Wren. winget uninstall FromentSoftware.Wren removes it.

3. Submit the pull request (Sacha only)

The manifests live in Microsoft's community repository, microsoft/winget-pkgs, under manifests\f\FromentSoftware\Wren\X.Y.Z\. To submit:

  1. Fork microsoft/winget-pkgs (once).
  2. Copy the three files from build\winget\X.Y.Z\ into manifests\f\FromentSoftware\Wren\X.Y.Z\ of the fork.
  3. Open a pull request. The repository's CI validates the manifest and installs the package in a sandbox; a reviewer or the automated moderator merges it.

Alternatively, wingetcreate update FromentSoftware.Wren --version X.Y.Z --urls <exe url> can make and submit the update in one step once the package exists; the files this script writes are the same shape and can seed the first submission.

Do not let any script submit automatically: the pull request is reviewed and merged by hand.

The package identifier

The identifier is FromentSoftware.Wren, which matches the program's AppUserModelID (FromentSoftware.Wren, src\browser\desktop_shell.odin) and the publisher "Froment Software". If the winget publisher moniker is ever chosen differently (for example SachaFroment), pass -PackageIdentifier to the script and use the same folder path under manifests\ in the pull request.

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