winget compatibility with SysWOW64 removal

[Karl-WE]

Hi all,
before raising a full-fledged issue for this, I would like understand existing capabilities of winget more.

Windows Server vNext now allows to optionally remove or re-enable SysWOW64 as a Feature on Demand (FoD). Hopefully, we will see a similar option in a future Windows 11 release, too.

For those unaware, this removal, after an OS reboot, would block any 32bit processes and applications to be executed at all. There's a clear error dlg coming up for executables.
I have invested time testing this new feature, identified and wrote a list of affected common applications and few Microsoft owned processes. But for now excluded winget in these tests.

Question:
Has this scenario been tested or considered? How would winget deal with 32bit apps that are installed on the system? Often enough apps are 64-bit, but installers of same apps are not. So besides winget upgrade even winget install / uninstall might cause unforseen and unhandled exceptions.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

[denelon]

I don't think we classify things well enough to know when a 32bit installer is present, but an x64 "package" gets installed.

[Karl-WE]

I thought so. Is it possible to determine the installer executable being x86 or x64 without running it?

[denelon]

It might be. I'd ask an agent to figure that out :)