Pros and Cons of vendor packages?

[Mbentley777]

Does anyone have a quick rundown of the pros and cons of using vendor pkgs as opposed to making a snapshot pkg?

Aside from lacking something like JAMF DMG's ability to set preferences for new and existing users by populating existing and new user prefs - are there other pros/cons to using vendor packages vs. snapshot pkg/dmg?

[talkingmoose · Accepted solution]

Assuming Casper is installing your vendor packages without issues then the big advantage is they require no extra preparation for deployment. Drop'em in Casper Admin and go. And they won't have any potential cruft that may be left over from your own repackaging. They're "clean".

My packaging philosophy is not to repackage software unless I have to do so. I manage preferences separately whether I can use MCX or have to push preference files. I also maintain separate license files apart from the application installers and preferences.

This is, more or less, an extension of the modular imaging philosophy. I can swap out any one of these items for another without impacting the others.

[Cem]

Ideally I would like to package it all. I may consider vendors package, if the vendor's installer provides an uninstaller. Or its straight forward to create an uninstaller.

don't forget what happened to packages came from vendor called Apple recently :) I had to spend a day to clear the mess!

Anyway...

I also try to separate license files as much as I can. It depends how convenient it is or its actually possible. That's also depends on licensing method etc.. as some provides floating, volume, site licenses.

[donmontalvo]

We usually validate vendor packages and if they pass inspection, we may rename the package, but we would not duplicate the effort.

Those that don't pass, we edit or recreate...like those that whack permissions, missing HW/SW checks, etc.

Those that have bad design (EnCase, AtHoc, etc.) such as missing requisite process management (launchd), we would build that funcationality into the PKG, test and deploy. When this happens we try to work with the vendors' engineers, most of the time they don't know launchd from StartupItems.

We very rarely (if ever) do snapshots...too sloppy and risky.

Don