make winget run as admin instead of asking for admin on each installer

[Sakooooo]

Description of the new feature / enhancement

could it be possible to make winget run as admin and then run the installers as admin or user depending on if they need to install to appdata or program files

Proposed technical implementation details

winget is run as admin > winget runs installer either as admin or user based on manifest > install done

[denelon]

@Sakooooo we're doing some work now with the "elevatesSelf" property in the manifest to enlighten ourselves when a package will trigger UAC prompt. We're working on some scenarios where we can logically call a single UAC request for a set of packages to be installed in that context. Some users will not have the ability to elevate, and we need to be able to reason about that particular scenario as well. Interestingly, there are also packages that will not install in admin and we've added "elevationProhibited". In those cases, running in admin will fail, and we need to reason about "de-elevation" to some "appropriate" user account.

[denelon]

This will be necessary to support winget import packages.json or winget upgrade --all or winget install <pkg1> <pkg2> <pkg3>.

[Sakooooo]

on some scenarios where we can logically call a single UAC request for a set of packages to be installed in that context.

so its not possible to have one admin process handle all installers if im not wrong its only when its a set of packages which all need admin can be done like this?

[Sakooooo]

This will be necessary to support winget import packages.json or winget upgrade --all or winget install <pkg1> <pkg2> <pkg3>.

ah cause im having that issue with --all and would like a more hands free experience where i can click one uac prompt and let winget do the rest as i do something else

[mdanish-kh]

ah cause im having that issue with --all and would like a more hands free experience where i can click one uac prompt and let winget do the rest as i do something else

For that you can run PowerShell/CMD as administrator and accept the UAC prompt once and run winget upgrade --all - this would fail for packages that don't allow installation in an elevated context but to be fair those packages are a very small minority

[Sakooooo]

ah cause im having that issue with --all and would like a more hands free experience where i can click one uac prompt and let winget do the rest as i do something else

For that you can run PowerShell/CMD as administrator and accept the UAC prompt once and run winget upgrade --all - this would fail for packages that don't allow installation in an elevated context but to be fair those packages are a very small minority

but couldnt you just spawn the installer process as the user instead of admin from winget? or does that not work in windows

[mdanish-kh]

I'm not sure about possibility, but WinGet is currently not able to elevate (user -> admin mode) or de-elevate (admin -> user mode) based on the requirements of the installer.

Related discussions at #218, #271, #281

[Sakooooo]

oh alright

[chewychewytoo]

What about a scenario where the organization locks down user ability to run anything from winget themselves and only wants admins to be able to run it, period.

[pbanach2002]

After starting PowerShell and entering the winget upgrade --all command, I get the following error:

Failed when searching source: winget
An unexpected error occurred while executing the command:
0x8a15000f : Data required by the source is missing

When I run powershell as a user, everything is fine, only the applocker cuts it.

[samized]

Same here, PowerShell as administrator and winget upgrade --all results in:

An unexpected error occurred while executing the command:
Download request status is not success.
0x80190194 : unknown error

As user everything works fine, except the annoying step to enter administrator login on every install...