It is quite strange, that Vectorworks is offering a "CLI"-Updater, which does not work on the command line.
This CLI-Option was made for admins, which update a lot of machines. It doesn't make sense for a single machine to update this way. So the recommendation to use the GUI-Updater is quite misleading.
It also a bad idea to force the admin to point to a user folder on that machine to use the cli-Updater.
Especially in larger offices, where admins use this cli-option for updates, the machines are used by different users. Each user has its own account on that machine (ActiveDirectory, OpenDirectory should be known to Vectorworks). My phone calls with different VW-supporters showed me, they haven't heard of that.
Also Vectorworks think that every user on a Mac has admin privileges. None of the users we support is working with admin privileges.
So why it is so complicated to create a tool, which works like
"/Applications/Vectorworks\ 2021/Vectorworks\ 2021\ Updater.app/Contents/Resources/cli.s -i <Path_to_update_file" ??
Why does the Updater need a serial? Why does the Updater not work as root?
The most stable way to update multiple machines is by
- manually updating one machine
- creating an image file (dmg) from that VW-Application folder
- mounting that .dmg on the other machines and use rsync to update the VW-Application-folder on the client.
OR (if a full installer is available, which isn't always available f.g. for SP4.0.1),
- delete the VW Application folder
- do a fresh install
We use a central folder on a server where the VW-Libraries are stored. Every night the folder on the client is updated via rsync from that directory on the server. New libraries are placed there. So everybody has the same libraries present.
Sorry to say, but maintaining customers using VW is really time consuming and annoying.
