SudoWrite not working in neovim

[eskinderg]

I have used the SudoWrite functionality and have saved me so much time.
Recently i am not sure why i am get the following message when i do the SudoWrite.

Error detected while processing BufWriteCmd Auto commands for "/etc/systemd/logind.conf":
sudo: no tty present and no askpass program specified

Below is my neovim version.
:version
NVIM v0.3.0
Build type: RelWithDebInfo
LuaJIT 2.1.0-beta3

[randomizedthinking]

It is a known issue in neovim: neovim/neovim#8527. The conclusion is not-to-fix since the current vim approach can create other unpleasant problems too -- it is just trade-off.

You can use: https://github.com/lambdalisue/suda.vim. It would be nice if @tpope can incorporate it to vim-eunuch.

[tpope]

Handling the password ourselves makes me a bit squeamish but I I can't think of a practical objection.

[rdnetto]

EDIT: Meant to post this yesterday, but only realised after posting that I hadn't refreshed the page and that the conversation had continued while I wasn't paying attention.

This is caused by neovim/neovim#8217. https://github.com/lambdalisue/suda.vim demonstrates one workaround for it (explicitly reading the password with inputsecret() and piping it in with sudo --stdin), which suffers from a few weaknesses compared to vim-eunuch's current implementation (password is temporarily stored in Vim, password must be re-entered multiple times).

Another more secure, but less portable, workaround is to just use netrw to edit the file over SSH via root@localhost, assuming you have the daemon running and your public key in root's authorized_hosts file.

Ideally we'd have a simple executable which prompted for the password then disappeared into the background, but that's a lot of complexity for the increase in security gained from the not keeping the password in Vim.

At any rate, I'll leave it to people who know more than me about these things to decide.

[tpope]

Oh, the re-entering of the password is a pretty huge compromise.

[Trollwut]

stupid question: so currently SudoWrite doesn't work in neovim?

[tpope]

It works if you have $SUDO_ASKPASS set, or Path askpass configured in /etc/sudo.conf.

[TSFoster]

Leaving this here in case it is of any use to people using macOS + nvim. There might be better ways, but here is how I got it to work:

1. Create file macos-askpass:

   #!/usr/bin/env osascript -l JavaScript
   
   var app = Application.currentApplication();
   app.includeStandardAdditions = true;
   app.displayDialog("Enter password:", { hiddenAnswer: true, defaultAnswer: "" }).textReturned;

2. chmod +x /path/to/macos-askpass

3. Set $SUDO_ASKPASS to /path/to/macos-askpass (I do this in my init.vim with let $SUDO_ASKPASS="/path/to/macos-askpass")