Vendors package software in funny ways sometimes. Every now and then, you might come across a vendor .pkg that comes with some kind of .xml or .cfg or .txt that has to be in the same directory as the .pkg. It’s likely because there’s some postinstall script in the .pkg itself that references that text file via relative path.

There are basically two approaches you can take here with Munki.

Approach #1 would be to create another .pkg that delivers that .pkg as a payload to a directory of your choosing (e.g., /tmp) and also delivers the config file to that same directory. Then, in your custom .pkg, you have your own postinstall script that runs something like installer -pkg /tmp/nameofpackages.pkg -target /

Approach #2 is what I’d recommend, if you’re using Munki, which would be manually creating a disk image that has both the .pkg and config file in the same directory, and then importing that disk image into Munki. Munki mounts .dmgs to an arbitrary random mount point, but since the .pkg and config file will be in the same directory within the mounted .dmg, it won’t matter, and when Munki sees the .pkg inside the .dmg, Munki will just install the .pkg, and everything will be cool.