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Hi all,
I have an installer that installs (among other things) a CEP plug-in for Premiere. Currently the installer contains the ZXP package + ExManCmd binary and uses the latter to install the ZXP.
I wonder if this is the right way to ship an extension, since:
1. the process is not super robust: it seems to fail on macOS if Premiere is not installed
3. ExManCmd is now deprecated in favor of Unified Plugin Installer Agent (UPIA). However UPIA might fail too if Creative Clouds is not installed yet (since UPIA comes with it).
I read some comments where people use to bypass ExManCmd/UPIA completely and use custom scripts/installers to copy the files where necessary. Wouldn't this approach make the ZXP creation useless?
In short, what is the most sensible/reliable way to distribute a CEP extension via an installer?
>...its the installer's responsibility...
I wasn't presuming any installer, nor does Adobe recommend creating one.
Making your extension available via Creative Cloud, and making the .zxp available to customers who operate without a consistent internet connection, are the recommended approaches.
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Bypassing ExManCmd/UPIA completely is a terrible idea.
It seems as though installing extensions for Creative Cloud applications, on systems without Creative Cloud installed, would be a pretty narrow use case.
Extension .zxp's can also be deployed across Enterprise customers, using installation packages created by the Admin Console.
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Hi Bruce!
Extension .zxp's can also be deployed across Enterprise customers, using installation packages created by the Admin Console.
By @Bruce Bullis
This way the plug-in will be available for download from the Creative Cloud, right? If so, I think the "offline" installer is a better fit for my task, as I have more things to install in addition to the CEP extension.
It seems as though installing extensions for Creative Cloud applications, on systems without Creative Cloud installed, would be a pretty narrow use case.
By @Bruce Bullis
So in other words, it's the installer's responsibility to check that the system is in a good state first (PPro installed, CC running and signed-in, ...)?
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>...its the installer's responsibility...
I wasn't presuming any installer, nor does Adobe recommend creating one.
Making your extension available via Creative Cloud, and making the .zxp available to customers who operate without a consistent internet connection, are the recommended approaches.
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Thanks Bruce, this is helpful.
The Adobe's GitHub repo mentions the enterprise console as another way to distribute ZXPs. I'm not sure I understand the process, though: is that a way to release packages internally/privately, between members of an organization?
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Admins for Adobe Enterprise deployments can make installer packages; groupings of installers, to be deployed on [some class of system]. Extensions (.zxp files) can be included in those packages.