CEP extension distribution on macOS without Exchange

[daves95694859]

Hi there,

I develop a c++ plugin for Illustrator that uses the CEP for its UI and I'm a struggling a little bit with the distribution of the extension on macOS. Previously I had a pkg that just placed the relevant files in the relevant folders under Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions and the UI would happily show when the aip plugin asked for it. I'm not sure when it stopped working but this doesn't appear to work anymore. However installing the ZXP using the ExManCmd command line tool does work and the UI launches fine. Is there some registration process that ExManCmd does aside from just placing the files in the above location that is now required by Adobe? This has been tested on the latest version of Illustrator (25.1) on macOS Big Sur. Obviously we want to avoid having to use the command line tool as this makes distribution a bit more difficult for our customers.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[erinferinferinf]

I know for Adobe XD, "side loading" of plugins was disallowed a few versions ago, but I haven't heard of this for Illustrator.

As a C++ plugin developer, be sure to update your PiPL file.

ExManCmd runs an entitlement check... but I'm not sure that's the issue. 🤔 ExManCmd also updates a database file. There's been a change between ExManCmd 7.10 and 7.11:

ExManCmd <7.10:

/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Extension Manager CC/Configuration/DB/ExMan.db

C:\ProgramData\Adobe\Extension Manager CC\Configuration\DB\ExMan.db

ExManCmd >7.11 updates two files:

/Users/<user>/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/ UPI/Configuration\DB/UPI.db

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\UPI\Configuration\DB\UPI.db

/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/UPI/Configuration/DB/UPISys.db

C:\ProgramData\Adobe\UPI\Configuration\DB\UPISys.db

[daves95694859 · Accepted solution]

I realised that I'd actually modified the UI extension and there were now additional files that I'd forgotten to add to the project that manages the pkg and so they subsequently weren't being distributed, invalidating the extensions signature in the process