What does configure --enable do? Why is it so slow?

[AdreKiseque]

To be clear I understand that it enables the use of configuration features, but... why does it take so long? What's it doing under there? It's eating up a lot of time in a setup script I'm writing so knowing what it might conflict with when running in parallel (e.g. DISM) would be helpful.

ETA: I also find that using the configure command takes an oddly long amount of time, especially considering my case, where it's reading off a YAML file to mostly just flip a bunch of on/off switches in PowerToys. Is this normal? Should note I'm testing in a VM but I really wouldn't expect such a level of degraded performance.

[Trenly]

When you install WinGet, by default it installs what is known as a Stub-package. In effect, this Stub is just the core functionality of WinGet and the minimal amount of libraries needed for it to run. When you use winget configure --enable, WinGet downloads and installs the rest of the package - giving you the full WinGet package instead of just the Stub. Since winget configure is mostly for power-users, and the everyday user likely won't use it, the Stub package avoids file and data transfer unless the feature is actually going to be used.

One way to avoid the long delay of winget configure --enable is to directly install the Full MSIX package directly from the GitHub releases. Doing so should cause winget configure --enable to be quite fast, as all the required components will already be present.

As to why it takes an oddly long time to actually run a configuration, that I don't know

[AdreKiseque]

Ahh, so it's downloading things off the internet! That explains a lot, thank you!

Also, to be clear... applying a configuration to a single app isn't supposed to take several minutes, right?