Confused about the way Winapps handles installing new applications

[RoeeWork]

Hey, i'm a bit confused on how i should approach installing new applications...

1. Do i need to install apps only using the setup.sh script? if so, do i need to add a new definition to winapps-src/apps?
2. When installing unsupported apps, should i use winapps manual?
3. Can i install apps directly inside the windows VM? if so, how?
4. When using winapps-launcher, will the app automatically appear in the Applications menu or will i need to set it up?

discussions like #550 and #631 just added to my confusion...
thanks!

[oskardotglobal]

1. What the WA "installation" does is it just creates the desktop files so the app shows up in applications, so you do that after installing the app in Windows.
2. You only need app definitions or use manual if setup.sh doesn't detect something after installing it and for high-res icon.
3. Apps are installed like you'd install any other app from Windows. You can open cmd using WA and install using winget, or just get a full session using winapps windows and download installers by hand.
4. It does that automatically if you used setup.sh

[oskardotglobal]

No, you need to re-run setup.sh

[alexrhyshurn]

Hello,

THe sequence is completely unclear to me (I am sure this is my failing, sorry). You say to re-run setup.sh but that fails with below error:

alex@Dell-7450:~/.local/bin/winapps-src$ ./setup.sh 
################################################################################
#                                                                              #
#                            WinApps Install Wizard                            #
#                                                                              #
################################################################################

Q) Install or uninstall WinApps? --> Install
Q) Configure WinApps for the current user 'alex' or the whole system? --> Current User
Q) Automatically install supported applications or choose manually? --> Manual (Default)

WinApps installation already present at /home/alex/.local/bin/winapps-src. Updating...
Already up to date.
Installing WinApps.
Checking for existing conflicting WinApps installations... Failed!

ERROR: EXISTING 'USER' WINAPPS INSTALLATION.
A previous WinApps installation was detected for the current user.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please remove the existing WinApps installation using winapps-setup --user --uninstall.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Exiting with status '3'.
alex@Dell-7450:~/.local/bin/winapps-src$ 

So there must be some steps that are missing from the documentation found at:
https://deepwiki.com/winapps-org/winapps/4.2-managing-applications
and
https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps#adding-additional-pre-defined-applications

It appears that setup.sh cannot modify an existing installation, so do I go ahead and re-run setup.sh TWICE? Once to uninstall and then once again to install afresh? WIll I lose anything in this process?

Many thanks for your help and advice,
Alex

[oskardotglobal]

Remove the —-install and optionally add —-add-apps

The DeepWiki docs are unofficial and AI-generated automatically, we have no control over those.

[alexrhyshurn]

Thank you for the guidance, and I am a bit embarrassed that it never occurred to me to check if there were any options available to ./setup.sh. Sorry.

Good to know about DeepWIki. I will ignore it.

I have created a pull request #938 proposing some documentation to make it clearer to people like me in the future. I hope that is helpful. Please accept/change/reject that as you see fit.

Many thanks for the great on this project.
Alex