Bug#810018: Bug #810018: Consider shipping pidof with procps

[Mark Hindley]

Craig,

Thanks for this.

On Mon, Nov 13, 2023 at 08:08:37PM +1100, Craig Small wrote:
>      I'll need the assistance of the sysvinit-utils maintainers (CC'ed) as
>    well, as pidof will be moving from that package.

IIUC, the proposal[1] was to create a new Essential procps-base just containing
pidof. Otherwise bin:procps would have to become Essential itself. Its installed
size is about 20 times larger than sysvinit-util and that wouldn't contribute to
shrinking the Essential set.

I think this approach would also require a debian-devel email announcing the
addition to the Essential set and I suppose the new src:procps will need a trip
through NEW.

>    So I'm looking at https://wiki.debian.org/PackageTransition
>    and assuming procps is 2:4.0.4-2 and sysvinit-utils is 3.08-3
>    I would create procps 2:4.0.4-3 with pidof and Breaks: sysvinit-utils
>    (<< 3.0.8-4) and Replaces: sysvinit-utils (<< 3.0.8-4)
>    sysvinit-utils maintainers create 3.08-4 without pidof and have Breaks:
>    procps (<< 2:4.0.4-3)

The dependencies would then be:-

procps-base:
 Breaks: sysvinit-utils (<< 3.0.8-4)
 Replaces: sysvinit-utils (<< 3.0.8-4)

sysvinit-utils without pidof:
 Breaks: procps-base (<< 2:4.0.4-3)

I hope I have understood the previous discussions correctly . I am not trying to
stand in the way at all, just ensure that this transition is worthwhile and done
correctly.

With best wishes

Mark

[1]  https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=810018#10