Changes to Adobe support

[Greg Neagle]

One of the major features of Munki over the years was its support for installing and removing Adobe software using its non-standard installation media.

Munki has supported installs of Adobe software since at least Adobe CS3, and added support for newer Adobe install “things” as Adobe changed how their install media worked over the years.

In recent years, however, the organization I work for has moved to just installing the Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop and allowing users to install and remove Adobe products (with Named User Licensing) via the Creative Cloud Desktop. So I have not been using or testing installs of current Adobe software via installation media created via the Adobe Admin Console.

I’ve seen people having issues with current/recent Adobe Admin Console packages and current Munki tools, both with install and uninstall. Many of these issues have workarounds, but not all admins will discover those.

I have a new testing branch/test build of the Munki tools that implements some changes to how Adobe installers are imported and handled at install and uninstall time.

The branch is named “uninstall_pkg” and the testing build is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5zigg6z38k4jrm5/munkitools-6.2.0.4539.pkg?dl=0

With this testing build, `munkiimport /path/to/AdobeInstaller.pkg --uninstallpkg=/path/to/AdobeUninstaller.pkg` results in a pkginfo that treats the Adobe installer package like any other Apple installer package — there is no attempt to do anything special. Likewise, on uninstall, the uninstaller package is simply installed — no Adobe-specific code is run.

If it is important to you that Munki continues its support for installing and removing Adobe software , please test and provide feedback. Again, I no longer use Munki to install and uninstall current Adobe software, so I will not be motivated to do in-depth testing here. I’ve verified an install and uninstall of a single 2021 product works as I expect. You should test 2022 and 2023 products.

Additionally:

The Adobe documentation in the wiki is seriously out of date. We need a new wiki page, focused on deploying current Adobe Admin Console packages. Earlier pages can remain, but be marked as “of historical interest” (who knows, there may be some poor K-12 admin still deploying CS6!)

I’d also like to see someone write up some documentation on using `/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/Adobe\ Desktop\ Common/HDBox/Setup --uninstall=1 <etc>` in an uninstall_script as an alternative uninstall method.

-Greg