Is there any graphical "sudo" for Mac OS X?

Question

I'm designing a little software in Java. I don't know the term/definition to what I'm doing, but I'm prompting commands from Java to the terminal. Something like this:

Process process = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("command"); 

I've done this before in Linux, and I used gksudo for commands that required the root password.

Is there any gksudo in OS X? Any graphical popup asking for root password?

Answer 1

You can more ore less manage to write your own with an AppleScript shell script:

#!/bin/sh osascript -e "do shell script \"$*\" with administrator privileges" 

cocoasudo looks aesthetically more pleasing, but this is already deployed.

Answer 2

This also looks promising: cocoasudo

It uses the OSX native Authorization Services API:

For Mac OS X Cocoa-based apps, there is analagous ability to sudo provided via the Authorization Services API. Use of the API allows you to prompt the user for their username and password requesting the ability to escalate privileges.

…

For that case, I’ve written a small utility that I’ve dubbed cocoasudo. Use cocoasudo in much the same way you’d use sudo. However, instead of users being prompted for their password in a Terminal window, they’ll get a dialog prompt via the Authorization Services API.