dart / flutter run process with sudo

Question

I would like to develop a flutter app for mac desktop and access the macs powermetrics with sudo powermetrics is there a way to ask the user for sudo privileges for this command on first run?

Answer 1

Hi I am just playing with flutter and I was solving same question.

In general we need GUI version of sudo called from bash.

example of bash commnad to run dscacheutil which needs sudo:

/usr/bin/osascript -e 'do shell script "dscacheutil -flushcache  2>&1 etc" with administrator privileges'

Then I was trying to run this command via Process.run() in flutter but no success. Then I created testing bash script and I tried to run bash script directly using Process.run(). It told me then I don't have privileges.

So I had to change my App Sandbox value to NO in Xcode. We have to open Runner.xcodeproj directly inside macos folder.

Then change App Sandbox to NO:

No we have to prepare our bash script:

#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/osascript -e 'do shell script "dscacheutil -flushcache  2>&1 etc" with administrator privileges'

Save it somewhere and last step we can call this bash script in flutter.

void main() {

      Process.run('/Users/nikix/Desktop/bash_test.sh',[]).then((result){
      stdout.write(result.stdout);
      stderr.write(result.stderr);
      });
}

Now I am getting GUI prompt with sudo, it seems to work. But I really don't know if this is correct way. I am pretty new in flutter.

UPDATE:

I have tried to build flutter app flutter build macos but bash script can't be run. Then I found this package called process_run

Then I was able to run custom bash script from builded app

In your yaml pubspec.yaml add that package:

dependencies:
  flutter:
    sdk: flutter
  process_run: any

Next step is to allow Sanbox App for release version of app in xcode:

Last step run our bash code in Dart:

import 'package:process_run/shell.dart';
void main() {

  var shell = Shell();

  shell.run("""
    #!/bin/bash
    /usr/bin/osascript -e 'do shell script "dscacheutil -flushcache  2>&1 etc" with administrator privileges'
    """).then((result){
      print('Shell script done!');
    }).catchError((onError) {
      print('Shell.run error!');
      print(onError);
    });
};