The heuristic could user "'SSH_CONNECTION' is in os.environ" and/or sys.stdin.isatty()
---

Without a PTY:

tchet@brix ~/git/game-data-packager $ ssh localhost game-data-packager soltys --install --install-method apt
tchet@localhost's password:
INFO:game_data_packager.build:will not produce "soltys-es-data" because "es" is not in LANGUAGE selection
INFO:game_data_packager.build:will not produce "soltys-pl-data" because "pl" is not in LANGUAGE selection
INFO:game_data_packager.download:downloading http://scummvm.org/frs/extras/Soltys/soltys-en-v1.0.zip
INFO:game_data_packager.packaging.deb:generating package soltys-en-data
Error creating textual authentication agent: Error opening current controlling terminal for the process (`/dev/tty'): No such device or address
generated "/home/tchet/soltys-en-data_1.0+72_all.deb"
using pkexec to obtain root privileges and install the package(s)

(please not that stderr and stdout have been mixed-up,
the "Error creating..." likely happens last)

-----

With a PTY:

tchet@brix ~/git/game-data-packager $ ssh localhost
tchet@localhost's password:
Linux brix 6.1.0-3-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.1.8-1 (2023-01-29) x86_64
....
Last login: Sun Feb 19 13:33:53 2023 from 192.168.2.12

tchet@brix ~ $ game-data-packager soltys --install --install-method apt
INFO:game_data_packager.build:will not produce "soltys-es-data" because "es" is not in LANGUAGE selection
INFO:game_data_packager.build:will not produce "soltys-pl-data" because "pl" is not in LANGUAGE selection
INFO:game_data_packager.download:downloading http://scummvm.org/frs/extras/Soltys/soltys-en-v1.0.zip
extracting vol.cat from /tmp/gdptmp.0p6shwau/soltys-en-v1.0.zip
extracting vol.dat from /tmp/gdptmp.0p6shwau/soltys-en-v1.0.zip
extracting license.txt from /tmp/gdptmp.0p6shwau/soltys-en-v1.0.zip
INFO:game_data_packager.packaging.deb:generating package soltys-en-data
generated "/home/tchet/soltys-en-data_1.0+72_all.deb"
using pkexec to obtain root privileges and install the package(s)
==== AUTHENTICATING FOR org.freedesktop.policykit.exec ====
Authentication is needed to run `/usr/bin/apt-get' as the super user
Authenticating as: root
Password:
polkit-agent-helper-1: error response to PolicyKit daemon: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1.Error.Failed: No session for cookie
==== AUTHENTICATION FAILED ====
Error executing command as another user: Not authorized

This incident has been reported.

In this scenario you don't have a pseudo-terminal, so su wouldn't work
either, and sudo would only work if you have NOPASSWD.

Using sys.stdin.isatty() wouldn't be a great heuristic for avoiding this,
because if game-data-packager is run without a controlling terminal in
a full GUI session like GNOME or KDE Plasma, we want to use pkexec for
its graphical authentication prompt (which will work *more* reliably
than prompting on the terminal in this case).

That's really a pkexec bug, which I've reported as #1031676. This
should work, but currently doesn't. Running something like
"systemctl restart avahi-daemon.service" from a similar TUI session
does work, and successfully prompts for the test user's password,
demonstrating that it's a pkexec bug rather than a polkitd limitation.

Avoiding pkexec in ssh or non-graphical sessions is a possible workaround
for that bug, but given the interactive and graphical nature of games, I'm
not sure that running g-d-p over ssh is such a major use case for it :-)

    smcv