Managing Adobe products
piyushnasa
May 14th, 2009
There are lots of Adobe products available like Adobe CS4 (webpremium, web standard, Flash Pro), Adobe Framemaker, Adobe Captivate etc.
There are a lot of common products between them.
Like CS4 Web premium has Flash Pro inside it.
My Question here is, how to maintain and package these applications so that we can maintain a good repository.
Most of these applications can be installed by using XML file as the record file.
It can happen that if multiple products are installed and if we uninstall one of them, it may take away common components.
All your suggestions and experience here will be appreciated.
These are all MSI installs already.
No packaging is required, as these Adobe apps are all MSI installs already.
Adobe also provide configuration tools (Installshield Tuner IIRC) for creating MST files.
Other than that, it's really up to you to determine the best way to handle these applications in your environment. There is no standard method since there are no standard environments.
If your issue has been solved, please use the "Mark as Solution" link on the most relevant thread.
I know these are all MSI
I know these are all MSI Installs and there is no need to manage it. All these can be configures using Record method in XML, however, I had started this discussion and Forum, to bring out the best possible solution which we all can implement in our environments for all these Adobe products.
As I had mentioned in my post that there occurs problem when we install multiple Adobe products on one machine, I just wanted to know the best solution to manage those.
Piyush Nasa
Altiris Certified Professional (ACP)
It would be interesting to see if anyone has a solution
In an ideal world, Adobe would have placed shared components into merge modules, and thus saved everyone a lot of hassle, but as the O/P has noted, management of multiple Adobe apps on one machine can be a nightmare, as removal of one app can also damage another by the removal of common components which have not been reference counted by Adobe in any way.
Since these are vendor MSI files, any attempt to try and introduce some sanity by changing the way the MSIs work, will undoubtedly prevent any future upgrades from working, so that is not a practical solution.
The only effective way I can see, is to isolate the applications from one another, using virtualisation technology, such as Symantec's Endpoint Virtualisation (AKA SVS), or Microsoft's Softgrid. The alternative would be to install all the apps on a Citrix or Terminal Server device, and give users access to the apps from the TS, on an as-required basis.
Any other desktop solution is likely to involve local caching of the entire installation source so that repairs can take place after an uninstall has caused damage. Windows Installer 5 does indeed bring full local caching of sources into existence, but only from the perspective of handling signed installs. However, as it's as much under development as Windows 7, perhaps other features will emerge over the next few months.
If your issue has been solved, please use the "Mark as Solution" link on the most relevant thread.
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