Fix --sender flag ignored in publish/upgrade commands

[tuky191]

Description

Fixes a bug where the --sender flag was ignored when using --serialize-unsigned-transaction with sui client publish and sui client upgrade commands.

The TxProcessingArgs::sender field is documented as:

Set the transaction sender to this address. When not specified, the sender is inferred by finding the owner of the gas payment.

However, publish_command and upgrade_command were always inferring the sender from gas objects, never checking processing.sender. This caused the UpgradeCap to be transferred to the inferred address instead of the specified sender.

This was problematic for workflows where:

• The transaction is serialized for later signing by a different party
• The signer address differs from the address owning the gas objects

The fix makes the implementation match the documented behavior: check processing.sender first and only fall back to gas inference if not specified.

Test plan

Added test_publish_sender_flag_respected_in_serialized_transaction which:

1. Creates a test cluster with two addresses (address_0 as active, address_1 as specified sender)
2. Calls TestPublish with --serialize-unsigned-transaction and --sender address_1
3. Verifies the transaction sender is address_1
4. Verifies the UpgradeCap recipient in the PTB is address_1, not address_0

cargo test -p sui --test cli_tests test_publish_sender_flag_respected_in_serialized_transaction

---

Release notes

Check each box that your changes affect. If none of the boxes relate to your changes, release notes aren't required.

For each box you select, include information after the relevant heading that describes the impact of your changes that a user might notice and any actions they must take to implement updates.

• Protocol:
• Nodes (Validators and Full nodes):
• gRPC:
• JSON-RPC:
• GraphQL:
• CLI: The --sender flag is now correctly respected in sui client publish and sui client upgrade commands when used with --serialize-unsigned-transaction. Previously, the sender was incorrectly inferred from gas objects, ignoring the --sender flag.
• Rust SDK:
• Indexing Framework:

[vercel]

The latest updates on your projects. Learn more about Vercel for GitHub.

Project	Deployment	Review	Updated (UTC)
sui-docs	Ready	Preview, Comment	Jan 21, 2026 10:57am

2 Skipped Deployments

Project	Deployment	Review	Updated (UTC)
multisig-toolkit	Ignored	Preview	Jan 21, 2026 10:57am
sui-kiosk	Ignored	Preview	Jan 21, 2026 10:57am

[stefan-mysten]

Thanks @tuky191, I'll do a few updates and try to merge asap.

[stefan-mysten]

@tuky191 it appears that I cannot push on this PR. There's two things to fix

1. run cargo fmt in crates/sui folder and commit those changes
2. add

let sender = processing
    .sender
    .unwrap_or(context.infer_sender(&payment.gas).await?);

to SuiClientCommands::SerializedTx { and SuiClientCommands::Call cases as well.

Thanks again for your fix.

[tuky191]

Hey @stefan-mysten, thanks for looking into this. I have fixed the formatting, the CI should pass now.