Hi there, it seems like you have been able to get Blender installed successfully. Could you share in more detail the process you used? Is this in Catalina?

I opened composer on my Catalina test machine, took a snapshot, installed Blender, made the permission modification you suggested, and then took the second snapshot. The resultant .pkg file fails to install on any other Catalina machine, just after the admin password stage it fails stating the package is incompatible with this OS.

The installer downloaded straight from Blender did finish on my test machine, but the app crashed as soon as it was opened. On otehr machines, the package fails to install at all as per above.

Did you run into any of this?

Thanks!

Log files indicate its trying to install to the System volume, did you also ahve to workaround this problem?

Package Authoring Error: Package contains system volume install location content. Installation cannot proceed since installing to the system volume is not possible.

Just an update to anyone who may be reading. I found issues deploying with Composer, whenever I tried to install the resultant package I got an error message saying it was incompatible with Catalina. In the end, I took the Blender DMG, mounted it and ran:

sudo pkgbuild --install-location /Applications --component /Volumes/Blender/Blender.app ./Desktop/<yourPackageNameHere>.pkg

To build a .pkg for Jamf Pro. I did have the permissions issue snowfox described, so I just ran his fix. My plan is to create a policy that deploys my package then has a seperate script that runs snowfox's fix. Hope this helps.

Hi, sorry for the late reply. I try to avoid using snapshots as much as possible as it can include unintended folders and files. I installed blender (drag and drop) on my test/build machine. I then ran the below command from the terminal:

sudo find /Applications/Blender.app -exec chmod 755 {} ;

I then dragged the blender.app on to Composer and then I changed the apps file permissions in Composer so that they no longer referenced my logged in account as the owner. i.e. I changed the permissions on the app (in Composer) to Owner = Root and Group = Admin). I then clicked on the cog icon at the bottom right and selected "Apply owner and group to Blender.app and all enclosed items". I then clicked 'build as PKG' on the top menu.

Installing the resultant PKG onto a clean test machine allowed me to run the app correctly on multiple accounts without any error messages popping up about permission settings or no-entry signs on the Blender.app in /Applications.

I didn't have the other issues that you had. I think it's because you were snapshoting and I wasn't doing that. Composer supports app drag and drop instead of snapshot. My original post was incorrectly worded when I said 'capture'. I have changed it now to 'package'.

Thanks so much for posting this. It worked for me following the instructions in the first post to prepare a package for Blender 2.83 LTS. The permissions fix is still necessary for this version.

@Becci I actually found a better way of doing this since the original post.

Install Blender 2.83.3 LTS on your admin machine
Run it to remove quarantine prompts etc.
Drag and drop it into composer
Open the applications folder displayed in Composers right hand window
Click on the Blender.app to see its permissions
Set the Owner = Root and the Group = Admin
At the bottom right you'll see the app permission settings are set to 700 read write and execute for the owner only (by default). Change this to 755 by ticking write and execute for the Admin group and Everyone group.
Now click the cog icon to the right.
Click - Apply Permissions to Blender.app and All Enclosed items (this applies the permission fix within Composer without running any terminal commands.)
Click - Apply Owner and Group to Blender.app and All Enclosed items
Now build the PKG and it will work. That's what I've been doing for the last few versions.

Thank you so much for this... It's been driving me crazy! I have always just set the permissions correctly in Composer, but no matter how many times I modified the permissions, it still came up broken on all of my deployments.

I am thinking I can just put the chmod in a post install script.

@kacey3, you've got the right idea, but you don't even have to make a post install script for this. It'll work just fine as an "Execute Command" in the "Files & Processes" payload of the policy you use to deploy Blender.

Thanks also to @snowfox for sharing the Terminal command. It works great this way.

Excellent!

Next question, is anyone else losing the app icon after deployment? The app works on all of my computers, but the icon is the generic app icon.

This was very helpful! Thanks!