Beta/Dev/Canary channels for fixed WebView2 runtime

[hrocha1]

It would be awesome if the fixed version of WebView2 runtime had equivalent of Beta/Dev/Canary channels that Edge has (basically some kind of daily/weekly builds).

It might not be as important in a year or so when the things get stable, but right now the current available version (87.0.664.8) doesn't support all of the WebView2 1.0.674-prerelease features which makes our testing more difficult.

We are in a process of transferring our node.js/Chromium application to WebView2 and having an ability to just copy our application to testing computers would certainly speed things up. It's also unrealistic to think that our "early adopters" would be willing to switch their Edge to Beta/Dev/Canary channel.

AB#30786355

[champnic]

I've added this as a scenario on our backlog, thanks for the suggestion! Note: if you do want to have your early adopters using Edge Beta/Dev/Canary channels to support your app, they don't have to use that channel themselves. They all install side-by-side, so they can keep using whatever preferred browser they were previously using.

[douglas-jordan]

You can have those channels installed and just specify the folder of channel you want to use in CreateCoreWebView2EnvironmentWithOptions. I have the general release, runtime and Canary installed and can switch to the Canary at any time. Could just as easily be the beta or dev builds as well.

[hrocha1]

Thanks for the info!

It looks like I can just copy the whole directory with dev/canary binaries to target machine, point the WebView2 there via BrowserExecutableFolder and it works (at least so far). That makes our initial testing much easier.