Feature request: have root permissions but execute cmd as a different user

Requirements

[X] I've searched platform-specific issues, issues and discussions to see if this has been reported before.

Describe the bug

When executing Yabai (MacOS window manager) commands within Kanata, the commands fail with a failed to connect to socket error unless prefixed with sudo -u <myusername>.

It seems that the underlying problem is related to how shell commands are executed within Kanata (and KMonad) when interacting with Yabai on macOS. The key issues stem from commands being executed as the root user by Kanata, which conflicts with Yabai's expectation to receive commands from the same user that started it.

Is this a solvable issue or do we have to live with the boilerplate when using Yabai from Kanata?

Thanks for your work and I am happy to assist in troubleshooting!

Relevant kanata config

No response

To Reproduce

ysn (cmd yabai -m space --focus next) leads to yabai-msg: failed to connect to socket. ysn (cmd sudo -u <myusername> sh -c "yabai -m space --focus next") executes successfully. ysn (cmd sh -c "su $SUDO_USER -c 'yabai -m space --focus next'") executes successfully as well (though it feels slower to me).

Expected behavior

Not needing that boilerplate code as a workaround.

Kanata version

kanata 1.6.0-prerelease-1

Debug logs

No response

Operating system

MacOS

Additional context

The issue also exists in KMonad and still persists (I just confirmed it by running yabai with and without boilerplate from KMonad).

Relevant References from KMonad

KMonad issue #426 discusses shell commands being executed as root.
KMonad issue #423 addresses the "failed to connect to socket" error specifically with Yabai commands.
The workaround involving sudo -u <user> is mentioned in this KMonad Discussion 422.

jtroo / kanata