# Bundling Julia GUI application for Windows

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/bundling-julia-gui-application-for-windows/105328>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** windows, gui\
**Created:** [October 23, 2023, 9:48pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/bundling-julia-gui-application-for-windows/105328 "2023-10-23T21:48:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Janis\_Erdmanis](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/janis_erdmanis/32/10869_2.png) [@Janis\_Erdmanis](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Janis_Erdmanis)\
**Post date:** [October 23, 2023, 9:48pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/bundling-julia-gui-application-for-windows/105328/1 "2023-10-23T21:48:14Z")

</div>

I am wondering has anyone has tried to bundle a Julia application for Universal Windows Platform (UWP) using the MSIX bundle?

I am currently working on a cross-platform bundler for Julia GUI applications called AppBundler.jl. I have already made some progress on the MacOS and Linux versions using the Snap format, but strict confinement is still an issue. Now, I am focusing on the Windows version and aiming to use the MSIX bundle. This would enable the publishing of apps on the Windows store, which is pretty cool. However, I have realized that there are many assumptions I have made that are not true on Windows, such as being able to use Powershell in the same way as Bash to write a launcher script.

My last attempt now is to write a launcher in C# using a template for the UWP GUI application. Distilling to essentials, I am now trying to start Julia, placing the `julia` folder next to the entry point and running it with a corresponding C# code:

```julia
string DIR = Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location);
string JULIA = Path.Combine(DIR, "julia", "bin", "julia.exe");

Process.Start(JULIA);

string USER_DIR = ApplicationData.Current.LocalFolder.Path;
string LOG_PATH = Path.Combine(USER_DIR, "output.txt");

File.WriteAllText(LOG_PATH, JULIA);

```

The good news is that the binary was found, and the terminal flashed on the screen. However, I got an output, which says `could not load library “libpcre2-8” The parameter is incorrect`. The full error can be seen in the screenshot. I have no idea how I could proceed from there.

 ![Image 24-10-2023 at 00.06](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/original/3X/0/7/0737ee2e99cd212b286d80ae2e6e4002f990f7f2.jpeg)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mkitti](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/mkitti/32/12459_2.png) [@mkitti](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mkitti)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2023, 12:28am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/bundling-julia-gui-application-for-windows/105328/2 "2023-10-24T00:28:20Z")

</div>

It is looking for `libpcre2-8.dll` which on Windows should be in the bin directory where the executable lives.

You may have a problem with the DLL search path because that may be restricted for UWP apps.

Ping me later for details and links

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mkitti](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/mkitti/32/12459_2.png) [@mkitti](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mkitti)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2023, 6:02pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/bundling-julia-gui-application-for-windows/105328/3 "2023-10-24T18:02:06Z")

</div>

This pull request and discussion may be relevant to your effort:

> <https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/pull/47775>
>
> Currently, we use \`LOAD\_WITH\_ALTERED\_SEARCH\_PATH\` to load DLL libraries on Windo…ws. With this pull request, if loading with the above fails, we use \`LOAD\_LIBRARY\_SEARCH\_USER\_DIRS\`.
> 
> This is a minimalist version of the idea proposed on \[Discourse\](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/use-modern-secure-windows-api-for-dlopen/90171/5). Rather than replacing \`LOAD\_WITH\_ALTERED\_SEARCH\_PATH\` with \`LOAD\_LIBRARY\_SEARCH\_DEFAULT\_DIRS\`, we only use \`LOAD\_LIBRARY\_SEARCH\_USER\_DIRS\` if loading with \`\`LOAD\_WITH\_ALTERED\_SEARCH\_PATH\` fails.
> 
> This allows the user to manually build a search list of directories via \`AddDllDirectory\`.
> \`\`\`julia
> @ccall "kernel32".AddDllDirectory(library::Cwstring)::Ptr{Nothing}
> \`\`\`
> 
> https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/libloaderapi/nf-libloaderapi-loadlibraryexw

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Janis\_Erdmanis](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/janis_erdmanis/32/10869_2.png) [@Janis\_Erdmanis](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Janis_Erdmanis)\
**Post date:** [October 25, 2023, 2:07pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/bundling-julia-gui-application-for-windows/105328/4 "2023-10-25T14:07:54Z")

</div>

This would be something I could try out if it would be available. I tried to set the `PATH` variable to before starting the process as follows:

```julia
string currentPath = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("PATH");
string newPath = Path.Combine(DIR, "julia", "bin") + ";" + currentPath;
Environment.SetEnvironmentVariable("PATH", newPath, EnvironmentVariableTarget.Process);
Process.Start(JULIA);

```

but that had no effect. What else I could try?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Janis\_Erdmanis](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/janis_erdmanis/32/10869_2.png) [@Janis\_Erdmanis](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Janis_Erdmanis)\
**Post date:** [October 25, 2023, 10:59pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/bundling-julia-gui-application-for-windows/105328/5 "2023-10-25T22:59:14Z")

</div>

I finally managed to get something. Using _Advanced Installer_ software I made a bundle of julia in full trust mode which runs. The next step is to see whether it will work with GUI applications as well and investigate what configuration made it possible so I could do bundling in more automated way.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Janis\_Erdmanis](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/janis_erdmanis/32/10869_2.png) [@Janis\_Erdmanis](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Janis_Erdmanis)\
**Post date:** [October 26, 2023, 9:50am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/bundling-julia-gui-application-for-windows/105328/7 "2023-10-26T09:50:44Z")

</div>

There couldn’t be such typos as I am not reffering to theese libraries individually.

The `libpcre2-8` library is part of Julia bundle and usually it is referenced from `julia.exe` itself. What I am merelly doing is that I am taking the Julia zip bundle for Windows, unzip it, and place it in MSIX folder structure and pack it with `makeappx` or in this case within C# project. I even tried to modify the PATH variable to include the `julia/bin` folder before starting the `julia.exe` but without any results.

It might be the case that the way Julia gets a relative path of DLLs is faulty within UWP container environment.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Janis\_Erdmanis](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/janis_erdmanis/32/10869_2.png) [@Janis\_Erdmanis](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Janis_Erdmanis)\
**Post date:** [October 27, 2023, 1:17pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/bundling-julia-gui-application-for-windows/105328/8 "2023-10-27T13:17:30Z")

</div>

I expected that I will have a smooth ride after cracking how to run Julia in a full trust UWP envirnment, but another issue have just surfaced. When Julia does precompilation, for instance, when adding a `Revise` package a following error is thrown:

```julia
julia> using Revise
[Info: Precompiling Revise [295af30f-e4ad-537b-8983-00126c2a3abe]
ERROR: LoadError: failed process: Process(setenv(
`'C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\JanisErdmanis.Julia_1.0.0.0_neutral__s0by06ay2112j\libexec\julia\lld.exe'
-flavor gnu -m i386pep -Bdynamic --enable-auto-image-base 
--allow-multiple-definition '' -shared -o 'C:\Users\jerdmanis\.julia\compiled\v1.9\OrderedCollections\jl_D1E8.tmp' 
--whole-archive 'C:\Users\jerdmanis\.julia\compiled\v1.9\OrderedCollections\jl_D1E7.tmp' 
--no-whole-archive '-LC:\Program Files\WindowsApps\JanisErdmanis.Julia_1.0.0.0_neutral__s0by06ay2112j\lib' 
'-LC:\Program Files\WindowsApps\JanisErdmanis.Julia_1.0.0.0_neutral__s0by06ay2112j\lib\julia' 
'-LC:\Program Files\WindowsApps\JanisErdmanis.Julia_1.0.0.0_neutral__s0by06ay2112j\bin' 
-ljulia -ljulia-internal -lopenlibm -lssp -lgcc_s -lgcc -lmsvcrt`,
["WINDIR=C:\\Windows", "PATH=C:\\Program Files\\WindowsApps\\JanisErdmanis.Julia_1.0.0.0_neutral__s0by06ay2112j\\lib\\julia;
C:\\Program Files\\WindowsApps\\JanisErdmanis.Julia_1.0.0.0_neutral__s0by06ay2112j\\bin;C:\\Program Files\\Parallels\\Parallels Tools\\Applications;C:\\Windows\\system32;C:\\Windows;
C:\\Windows\\System32\\Wbem;
C:\\Windows\\System32\\WindowsPowerShell\\v1.0\\;C:\\Windows\\System32\\OpenSSH\\;C:\\Program Files\\dotnet\\;
C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Windows Kits\\10\\Windows Performance Toolkit\\;C:\\Users\\jerdmanis\\AppData\\Local\\Microsoft\\WindowsApps;C:\\Users\\jerdmanis\\.dotnet\\tools;C:\\Users\\jerdmanis\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Julia-1.9.3\\bin;
C:\\Users\\jerdmanis\\JuliaPack\\julia\\lib", "USERDOMAIN_ROAMINGPROFILE=JANISERDMAN0F68", "LOCALAPPDATA=C:\\Users\\jerdmanis\\AppData\\Local", "HOMEPATH=\\Users\\jerdmanis", "PROCESSOR_IDENTIFIER=ARMv8 (64-bit) Family 8 Model 0 Revision 0, ", "NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS=4", "PATHEXT=.COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH;.MSC", "SYSTEMROOT=C:\\Windows", "APPDATA=C:\\Users\\jerdmanis\\AppData\\Roaming" 
…  
"COMMONPROGRAMFILES(ARM)=C:\\Program Files (Arm)\\Common Files", "PROCESSOR_LEVEL=0", "JULIA_LOAD_PATH=C:\\Users\\jerdmanis\\.julia\\environments\\v1.9\\Project.toml;C:\\Program Files\\WindowsApps\\JanisErdmanis.Julia_1.0.0.0_neutral__s0by06ay2112j\\share\\julia\\stdlib\\v1.9", "SYSTEMDRIVE=C:", "=C:=C:\\Program Files", "PROGRAMW6432=C:\\Program Files", 
"TEMP=C:\\Users\\JERDMA~1\\AppData\\Local\\Temp", "HOMEDRIVE=C:", "OPENBLAS_MAIN_FREE=1", "PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE=AMD64"]),
 ProcessExited(3221225781)) [3221225781]

```

I do have access to Julia REPL, what could I check to troubleshoot the issue?

One thing I noticed is that running `lld.exe` with Julia shell from UWP container (still under full trust) does not give any output wheras running it from ordinary Julia shell gives output:

```julia
julia> run(`lld.exe`)
lld is a generic driver.
Invoke ld.lld (Unix), ld64.lld (macOS), lld-link (Windows), wasm-ld (WebAssembly) instead

```

I could also reproduce this strange behaviour by running Julia with adminstrateive rights from `C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\JanisErdmanis.Julia_1.0.0.0_neutral__s0by06ay2112j` where no output for `lld.exe` is shown. Afterwards I copied all files from the WindowsApp folder to a home directory and the output for `lld.exe` command returned.