Only 3 months ago, we announced Adobe Admin Console Packages – 2.0. Well, there have since been some changes which have required a rewrite and as new version, hence 3.0.

The primary changes are:

• The Adobe installers are now installed locally, with the locally installed application being queried to get the required metadata.
• Due to the above, the script AdobeAdminConsolePackagesImporter.py, now needs to be run under sudo.
• Additionally, two new flags have been added to AdobeAdminConsolePackagesImporter.py:
  • –extract-icons: Extracts the applications icon to the recipes %RECIPE_CACHE_DIR%
  • –uninstall: Uninstalls the applications from the Mac running AdobeAdminConsolePackagesImporter.py, one the have been processed for the required metadata.
• With macOS 15 no longer supporting bundle packages, bundle package support has been removed.
• Recipes for 2021 and 2022 titles have been removed.

For more details on the why, see below. Otherwise head over to the ReadMe.

What changed?

Each iteration of the various scripted processes I’ve created/contributed to over the years, have iterated over the Adobe Admin Console generated pkg’s to get the metadata of the title included within.

With the release of Adobe Illustrator 28.6 and 28.7, pulling apart the Adobe Admin Console generated pkg’s and parsing the optionXML.xml and Application.json didn’t generate the same data that installing Adobe Illustrator did.

See the below for Adobe Illustrator 28.6 package:

• Application.json
  • CodexVersion – 28.6
  • ProductVersion – 28.6.0.709
• optionXML.xml:
  • prodVersion – 28.6
  • productVersion – 28.6.0.709

And within Adobe Illustrator 28.6.0’s Info.plist:

• CFBundleVersion – 28.6.0
• CFBundleShortVersionString – 28.6.0

It might not seem like much, but that trailing zero meant that the data retrieved from the pkg’s optionXML.xml and Application.json don’t match what is installed.

When Adobe Illustrator 28.7 was released, it was a similar story:

• Application.json
  • CodexVersion – 28.7
  • ProductVersion – 28.7.0.136
• optionXML.xml:
  • prodVersion – 28.7
  • productVersion – 28.7.0.136
• Info.plist:
  • CFBundleVersion – 28.7.0
  • CFBundleShortVersionString – 28.7.0

And we’ve started to see some discrepancies with other Adobe titles too.

Why install?

To be honest, this was something we should have done earlier. It’s the only for sure to determine what is actually being installed via these Adobe Admin Console generated pkg’s.

Also, all the logic has now been added to AdobeAdminConsolePackagesImporter.py, meaning no need for a custom processor.

What do I need to do if I already using the recipes?

You most probably need to just update your overrides trust information.

But, if you get stuck, read out to me in the #autopkg channel within the MacAdmins Slack.

A note on the Adobe Substance titles

At the time of writing, the Adobe Substance titles latest versions are architecture specific versions.

Meaning, that whilst Adobe offer a universal pkg for the Adobe Substance titles the versions of those pkg’s are quite far behind the versions included within the architecture specific pkg’s.

For now, if a pkg requires different processor architecture than the host Mac. You’ll get errors like the below and the offending Adobe title will be removed from the recipe list.

WARNING: Removed AdobeSubstance3DDesigner, as it can only install on: x86_64, and this Mac's processor is: arm64.