py-admin-launch 0.1.1

A cross-platform command launcher for administrator privileges.

py-admin-launch

A cross-platform Python command/helper to launch a specified program with administrator privileges.

Strategy

• Linux desktop: pkexec for polkit GUI authentication, falling back to sudo when pkexec is not available.
• Windows: ShellExecuteW(..., "runas", ...).
• macOS: osascript + with administrator privileges, falling back to sudo when osascript is not available.

If the current process is already administrator/root, the command is launched directly as the current user.

CLI

Run from source:

python -m py_admin_launch -- your-command arg1 arg2

After installing the package:

py-admin-launch -- your-command arg1 arg2

Useful options:

py-admin-launch --wait --cwd /path/to/workdir -- your-command arg1 arg2

--wait makes py-admin-launch wait until the launched command exits and then return that command's exit code when the platform launcher supports it. Without --wait, py-admin-launch only starts the command and returns after the elevation request is handed off.

On Windows, elevated launches use ShellExecuteW(..., "runas", ...), which does not provide a child process handle to this helper. That means --wait cannot observe the elevated program's exit code on Windows.

Python API

from py_admin_launch import launch

launch(["python", "-m", "http.server", "80"])

launch() accepts a command list plus optional cwd and wait arguments:

result = launch(["your-command", "arg1"], cwd="/tmp", wait=True)
print(result.elevated, result.returncode)

When wait=True, returncode is the launched command's exit code where the platform exposes one. When wait=False, returncode is None.