I have another update from engineering and I've updated my Readme here.
When CEP attempts to load a plugin in the host application, it relies on a library called ZXPSignLib to verify the plugin package's signature. If the plugin package is installed via UPIA – or an installer that uses UPIA, such as "ZXPInstaller", the signature verification fails, preventing the plugin from loading.
During the installation of the plugin package via UPIA if the plugin contains any symbolic links (symlinks), these links are extracted as regular text files containing the path to the original file, instead of including the actual content of the original file.
As part of the signature verification process, ZXPSignLib replaces the symlinks in the extension directory with the actual files they point to. Since plugins are installed in system space, ZXPSignLib requires administrator privileges to perform this operation. When the host application is run in administrator mode, the symlinks are correctly replaced with the original files, resolving the issue. Once this happens, the signature verification succeeds, and the extension can be loaded successfully—even if the application is later launched by a non-administrative user.
When plugins were installed via ExManCmd, ZXPSignLib's signature verification process was also executed as part of installation process. ExManCmd ran with elevated permissions, which allowed ZXPSignLib to properly replicate the symlinks at the time of installation, preventing the issue from occurring at the time of loading the extension.
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