P.S. In Windows 95 - Windows Vista era, there was a good tradition of "Compatible with Windows XXX" certifications for apps. If MS did something like that for Windows 10/11 and included the segment heap tick mark into it, a considerably larger amount of apps and its users would benefit from increased performance. Think better energy consumption and eco-friendliness as additional bonuses.
P.S. 2: The problem with UWP was not the technology itself, it was the stubbornness to have it packaged and tied to The Store, all of which contradicts the very existence of Windows as an OS.
I can't really complain, though. If UWP would've broken through, the Steam Deck would've probably been a much more massive undertaking to get working right.
As long as developers can opt into the new system (which they can with the manifest approach), I don't think it matters whether you're doing UWP or traditional Windows applications.
Microsoft has added a mishmash of flags in the app manifest and transparently supports manifest-less applications, so developers don't have a need to ever bother including a manifest either.
It'd annoy a lot of people, but if Windows would show a "this app has been written for an older version of Windows and may be slower than modern applications" warning for old .exes (or maybe one of those popups they now like about which apps are slower than they could be), developers would have an incentive to add a manifest to their applications and Microsoft could enable a lot more of these optimisations for a lot more applications.
Does that global registry key require a reboot, or does it just take effect on executable launch?
I had previously seen this described as 0 vs non-zero. Since you have some inside experience :), anything special about 3 instead? What about 2? How would I find these value meanings out on my own (if that's even possible)?
Thanks!
Using the application manifest approach is the right way to ship software that opts into segment heap. The registry thing is just a convenience for local testing.
Anyway to globally turn it on when a blacklist or denylist or whatever in case something individual acts up ?
Also assuming that most Microsoft first party applications in Windows server (DNS, etc etc) would all be optimised for segment heap ?