WeiDU permission model on Windows

[Wisp]

Edit: topic continued from here.

As a way of resolving this in the short term, how about shipping WeiDU that does not prompt for elevation (embedded run-as-invoker manifest) and if autoupdate get any pid -1s, those files are skipped, the user is told to update manually or re-run WeiDU as admin and the current process is exited? Elevation will remain an issue as long as setup-mymod.exe is one, but this would be one step closer to WeiDU not being an unbehaved legacy program on Windows.

Comments are sought on the technical aspects and the user experience.

[jastey]

You mean WeiDU could be executed without asking for the admin password every time if executed under a useraccount without admin rights, but that this would mean skipping the auto-update process in this case?

If yes, then I'd say it would spare me typing that password at least eight times per mod update so as a user I'd be all for it. I can't judge whether this would be a bad idea in regard to malware - for the rare possibility of an infected exe.

As for the techical aspects of what you asked I can't say much to it as I don't even understand the question.

[Wisp]

From a user's perspective I'd work much like you describe, yes. You'd start WeiDU and it would not prompt for your password and would run as a user process (i.e., with no elevated rights). If there were invalid pids, WeiDU would ask you to re-run as admin and exit. If there were any auto-updates carried out, WeiDU would say it was successful and exit (please re-run to install your mod). This I have to do to relinquish elevation for the remainder of the process (which does not normally require elevation, and running elevated with no need is a bad idea). This would also mean that unelevated WeiDU would needlessly exit if there were any auto-updates, but I deem this preferable to the alternative of needlessly running with elevation. If you were determined to install with elevation, you could do so by running as admin until auto-update makes no changes, in which case WeiDU would proceed with elevated rights.

[Wisp]

Of course, it's even easier than this, since you don't need execute-permission to overwrite. Autoupdate than just assume that any executables that are inexecutable are old.