Bug#826215: procps pidof (was: Re: Processed: forcibly merging 851747 826215)

[Craig Small]

On Thu, 30 Oct 2025 at 04:51, Debian Bug Tracking System <
owner at bugs.debian.org> wrote:

> Bug #851747 [sysvinit-utils] sysvinit-utils: drop Essential flag
>
and

> Added blocking bug(s) of 826215: 810018
>

 So #810018 is for procps and is about shipping the pidof that procps has
instead of the one in sysvinit-utils
The consensus (and probably the only consensus) was to wait until the
release happened, which it has so now is the time to decide.

The issue is how to get from here to there?
Also what is "there", does anything that has pidof need to be essential?

Most of the use-case for pidof is that /usr/lib/lsb/init-functions uses it
OR init scripts incorrectly use it.
Incorrectly for most because they probably should be using pidofproc()
(found in init-functions) instead.
>From a dependency point of view, you get to the same point; needing pidof
directly or indirectly for most init scripts.

My reading is that you only need init-functions if you're using the init
files instead of the systemd unit files.
So there's no impact for a host running systemd with everything using unit
files if sysvinit-utils is removed.

However if both those criteria are not true then you need init-functions in
sysvinit-utils and therefore need
a pidof from somewhere.

Two paths here.

Path A: pidof stays in sysvinit-utils then we can keep going with the pidof
most other distros don't use and I'll close #810018.

Path B: We decide to use the procps pidof. Then there are two questions.
1) Should the procps pidof package be Essential?
2) Should the procps pidof package be separate to procps and libproc2?

My preference is for 1) the answer is no. This package would only be needed
because sysvinit-utils needs it, so a dependency should cover it.
The "main" procps package would probably need a dependency/recommends on it
just so pidof is there for users.

For 2) I have no real preference. Keeping pidof in main procps is easier
for me, but it does mean anything that needs sysvinit-utils
will pull in procps and its libraries. Most people would install procps
anyway but there might be a subsection that use sysvinit
and don't install procps; I have no idea what this number is. The breaking
out of pidof from procps would be for this intersection of users.

 - Craig
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