Running Multiple Recipes

Options for running multiple recipes with AutoPkg

autopkg has a several mechanisms for running multiple recipes in a single command invocation.

Multiple arguments

autopkg run Firefox.munki TextWrangler.munki VLC.munki

Recipe lists

It can also take a --recipe-list option (or simply -l) pointing to a plain text file, with one recipe name per line. Lines in the text file beginning with a # will be treated as comments and ignored.

autopkg run --recipe-list /path/to/recipe_list.txt

In both cases, all downloads and imports will be performed in one operation and the summary will include all recipes:

% autopkg run Firefox.munki BBEdit.munki VLC.munki
Processing Firefox.munki...
Processing BBEdit.munki...
Processing VLC.munki...
Processing MakeCatalogs.munki...

The following new items were imported into Munki:
    Name     Version  Catalogs  Pkginfo Path                     Pkg Repo Path                  Icon Repo Path
    ----     -------  --------  ------------                     -------------                  --------------
    Firefox  86.0     testing   apps/firefox/Firefox-86.0.plist  apps/firefox/Firefox-86.0.dmg
    BBEdit   13.5.4   testing   apps/BBEdit/BBEdit-13.5.4.plist  apps/BBEdit/BBEdit-13.5.4.dmg
    VLC      3.0.12   testing   apps/VLC/VLC-3.0.12.plist        apps/VLC/VLC-3.0.12.dmg

You can also use the list-recipes verb to output a list of all recipes that were found:

autopkg list-recipes > /path/to/list_of_all_recipes.txt

Plist recipe lists

AutoPkg can also accept a recipe list in a property list format when using the same -l/--recipe-list option, in which additional options limited to only this autopkg run may be stored for convenient re-use:

• pre/post-processors
• additional input variables that would normally be run using either the CLI -k/--key option (see Recipe-Overrides) or using a "global" preference value saved in the com.github.autopkg preference domain.

Here's an example of such a recipe list in property list format:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>postprocessors</key>
    <array>
        <string>io.github.hjuutilainen.VirusTotalAnalyzer/VirusTotalAnalyzer</string>
    </array>
    <key>recipes</key>
    <array>
        <string>AdobeAIR.munki</string>
        <string>AdobeFlashPlayer.munki</string>
        <string>AdobeReaderDC.munki</string>
        <string>Atom.munki</string>
        <string>BluejeansApp.munki</string>
        <string>MakeCatalogs.munki</string>
    </array>
    <key>VIRUSTOTAL_ALWAYS_REPORT</key>
    <false/>
    <key>VIRUSTOTAL_AUTO_SUBMIT</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

When autopkg run is given this recipe list using the -l option, it will do the run using the additional postprocessor argument, and also set Input variables used for only this run (VIRUSTOTAL_ALWAYS_REPORT and VIRUSTOTAL_AUTO_SUBMIT, which are expected by the VirusTotalAnalyzer processor to be set.

Using a plist recipe list file makes it possible to build a "run configuration" that contains options that might otherwise require a lengthy set of CLI arguments, and can support richer data types than simple strings for input variables.