Bug#1131136: sysvinit-utils does not need to be in Essential set

[Gioele Barabucci]

On 24/04/26 19:58, Mark Hindley wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 24, 2026 at 03:19:21PM +0200, Gioele Barabucci wrote:
>> My position is: not all packages that ship an init-script should depend on
>> sysvinit-utils. Why? Because init-scripts are not run-time components of
>> upstream programs (except a handful of cases that will, in fact require
>> Depends: sysvinit-utils). If a user (not a program) wants to run an
>> init-script, they must take care of making available everything that the
>> init-script requires. That means installing at least sysvinit-core or
>> -utils.
> 
> I think the concern is only packages whose LSB initscripts use
> init-d-script(5). This could be addressed by teaching dh_installinit to add
> Depends: sysvinit-utils to ${misc:Depends} or similar. But this needs to be done
> before Essential is dropped.
> 
> It isn't the user's responsibility to work out the dependencies of a package, it
> is declared by the package itself. Policy is clear about that. Obviously Policy
> can be changed and if you want to do that, please build the necessary consensus

It seems to me that that this is the main friction point of this branch 
of the discussion: should common initscripts (common as in "used only to 
start/stop daemons and not executed at runtime by an upstream program") 
be seen as normal programs that users can run on their own even on 
non-sysvinit systems? If yes, all packages that ship an initscript 
should Depends: or Recommends: all the necessary packages (including 
sysvinit-tools). If not, then users will be responsible for manually 
installing the required packages (like they are for scripts shipped by 
many packages in examples/ directories).

We have expressed our opinions. But they remain opinions.

To unblock this specific issue and make it possible to discuss the rest 
of the plan, shall we prepare a case and submit it to the tech-ctte?

In the meantime, can we reach agreement on moving pidof to procps? That 
will enable beginning the pidof-related MBF.

Regards,

-- 
Gioele Barabucci