PDFtk Server Install Workaround for Mac OS X

gistfile1.md

Installing PDFtk Server edittion on your Mac

This workaround install is necessary because PDFtk was pulled from homebrew-cask due to issues with it aggressively overwriting file permissions that could impact other installed libraries. See this homebrew-cask issue.

The following steps worked on Mac OS X 10.10.1 with a standard brew installation for the PDFtk Mac OS X server libary version 2.02.

All Terminal commands separated by a full line space. Some commands wrap into multiple lines.

Download and extract the Mac OS X server install pacakge

curl -o ~/Downloads/pdftk_download.pkg https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.6-setup.pkg

pkgutil --expand ~/Downloads/pdftk_download.pkg ~/Downloads/pdftk_package

Now create directories for where it would go with a proper brew install.

*NOTE: I had no prior install of PDFtk via brew-cask when doing this. Not sure how having multiple versions installed might affect brew link and these instructions.

cd ~ && mkdir /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02 /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/bin /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/lib /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share/man /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share/man/man1

Here are the individual directories being created above (assume being in cd ~ directory).

mkdir /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk

mkdir /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02

mkdir /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/bin

mkdir /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/lib

mkdir /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share

mkdir /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share/man

mkdir /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share/man/man1

Give the Payload file the proper gzip file extension and unzip it

mv ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/Payload ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/payload.gz

gunzip ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/payload.gz

Use cpio to unarchive the resulting file

cd ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/ && cpio -iv < ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/payload && cd ~

Move the relevant extracted files to their appropriate locations within the Cellar/pdftk directory

cd ~ && mv Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/bin/pdftk /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/bin/pdftk && mv Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/lib/* /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/lib/ && mv Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/man/pdftk.1 /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share/man/man1/pdftk.1

Or the individual file moves (assume being in cd ~ directory)

mv Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/bin/pdftk /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/bin/pdftk

mv Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/lib/* /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/lib/

mv Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/man/pdftk.1 /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share/man/man1/pdftk.1

Create the appropriate symlinks through brew

brew doctor

and most likely then

brew link pdftk

I just used pdftk-java port of pdftk. https://gitlab.com/pdftk-java/pdftk

Version of pdftk running on macOS Big Sur (= macOS 11) with the Apple M1 chip:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/414272/bad-cpu-type-in-executable-when-running-pdftk/420712#420712

Using the pdftk-java port with homebrew on the Apple M1 architecture:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60859527/how-to-solve-pdftk-bad-cpu-type-in-executable-on-mac/67561373#67561373

For OSX BigSur (11.6.4), just substitute the URL in the curl command with this one: https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.11-setup.pkg.

curl -o ~/Downloads/pdftk_download.pkg https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.11-setup.pkg

pkgutil --expand ~/Downloads/pdftk_download.pkg ~/Downloads/pdftk_package

cd ~ && \ mkdir /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk \ /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02 \ /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/bin \ /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/lib \ /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share \ /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share/man \ /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share/man/man1

mv ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/Payload ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/payload.gz

gunzip ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/payload.gz

cd ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/

cpio -iv < ~/Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/payload

cd ~

mv Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/bin/pdftk /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/bin/pdftk

mv Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/lib/* /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/lib/

mv Downloads/pdftk_package/pdftk.pkg/man/pdftk.1 /usr/local/Cellar/pdftk/2.02/share/man/man1/pdftk.1

brew doctor

brew link pdftk

I just used pdftk-java port of pdftk. https://gitlab.com/pdftk-java/pdftk

worked for me: brew install pdftk-java

I just used pdftk-java port of pdftk. https://gitlab.com/pdftk-java/pdftk

worked for me: brew install pdftk-java

This worked for me on an M1 mac. Seems like if you attempt to do a brew install pdftk the recommendation from homebrew is to use the pdftk-java

I just used pdftk-java port of pdftk. https://gitlab.com/pdftk-java/pdftk

worked for me: brew install pdftk-java

This worked for me on an M1 mac. Seems like if you attempt to do a brew install pdftk the recommendation from homebrew is to use the pdftk-java

Can double that. M1 and brew install pdftk-java works.